My Inner "Hyde"

After discussing the book The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, I made the connection that everyone is a little like Jekyll and Hyde. Everyone has a part of Hyde, or evil rather, inside of them. One of my “evils” that has been consuming me lately is the case of “senioritis.” Throughout my senior year, I have noticed that I have not been trying as hard in school as I normally would have. I used to be productive and motivated to do my school work, but as graduation nears, I become more and more unproductive and less motivated. Before my senior year, I would occasionally procrastinate but I would eventually get the work finished and turned in on time. Now I sometimes, unfortunately, procrastinate and end up not doing the work at all. The first few times I began to slack off, it was easy for me to pick my work right back up again and continue. The more I slack off though, the harder it is for me to get back on the studious track I used to be on. I find myself like Jekyll in that aspect. The more Jekyll began to drink the potion to transform into Hyde, the harder it was for him to stop. The more I slack off in school, the harder it is for me to pick back up my school work again. Jekyll was not able to control his transformations at the end of the novel. I do believe, although it is hard for me to pick up my schoolwork again and it is difficult for me to find the motivation to do it, that I will be able to get back on the studious track I once was on again. I won’t let indulging in not doing all of my school work control me, especially once I begin college. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m not so good at taming my inner Hyde right now and I am indulging in the evil of not doing all of my school work, like Jekyll indulged in drinking the potions and transforming into Hyde. However, unlike Jekyll I will stop indulging in this evil before it controls me.

Gender Inequality

          Every book we read that focuses on the inequality of the treatment of women makes me so much more thankful to be a woman in today’s time period. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is another book we read that exposed how poorly women were treated. Woolf focused her essay about how women were treated unequally compared to men when writing fiction, but beyond just writing, her essay demonstrates how women were considered inferior to men just in general back in her day.

Often times when women wrote, women would “preach” about the inequalities between the two genders. Instead of society actually reading and listening to the real discrimination's of the world so the problems could be fixed, no one would give the book a chance. If a woman wrote a book it was automatically deemed “unworthy” to be read since “a woman wrote it.” Woolf showed in her essay how unfair women were treated when writing literature. Aside from just in literature, women were treated unfairly and were dehumanized compared to men just in everyday life. Women were thought of as housewives and nothing more. Women had very little to no chance to be successful during Woolf’s era, unlike men. 

Thankfully, the world has evolved and accepted women’s writing and their success. Today if a woman is an author, people are willing to read the book and usually do not judge the work due to the gender of the author. Both women and men read a work of literature written by women now. Women authors are just as successful as men when writing literature as proven by J.K Rowling, Danielle Steele, Stephanie Myer, Alice Walker and many others. Not only have women advanced in writing, but we also have the ability to excel in any area we want to. Women, today, are given about just as many opportunities as men are. Women are successful and close to equal to men. Of course there will always be injustices in our society, but I am so thankful for how far our society has evolved and am so appreciative to be a woman in today’s society where women aren’t inferior to men any more.

Appreciate What You Have

Reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini really opened my eyes to the oppression of women over in the Middle East. The stories of violence and war broadcasted over the news distract the public from the problems of oppressing Middle Eastern women.

            The women in the Middle East do not have much of a say in basically anything they do. In the novel, Mariam and Laila had very few choices that they could make on their own. The first choice Mariam was able to make on her own was going to visit her father. Choosing to leave her mother and go to her father led Mariam to live a life without any choices. Mariam’s mother committed suicide which forced her to stay with her father. Her father ended up arranging Mariam’s marriage to Rasheed. Living with Rasheed stripped Mariam of making her own choices as he used her as his own slave. The next time she was able to make her own choice was when she decided to kill Rasheed with a shovel and later when she decides to sign a contract of guilt and die.

            As a young girl, Laila didn’t have many choices either. Laila had to take over as the woman of the household since her mother refused to cook or clean when in her deep depression. Laila was also forced to go to school to get an education by her father, as she had no choice. After her parents died, Laila had to agree to Rasheed’s marriage proposal to survive since she was left stranded and didn’t want to have to survive by begging on the streets. After Rasheed was killed and Mariam handed over her life to the Taliban, Laila was forced to find another man to protect her so she wouldn’t be left begging on the streets. Luckily the man she found was the man she has been in love with her whole life, Tariq.

            Seeing the oppression of women in the Middle East makes me so much more appreciative to live as a woman in the United States. Arranged marriages are not vital to the American culture. In the United States, women can choose who they want to marry or if they want to marry at all. Here, a woman doesn’t need a man to survive in life. Women are able to find jobs and make their own livings; they don’t need to depend on men for money or survival. Women are not forced to wear burquas like Middle Eastern women are; women can choose to wear the clothes they want, how to do their hair and if they want to wear makeup or not. Reading about all of the differences between the American culture and the Middle Eastern culture makes me so much more appreciative to live in the country I do where women have just about as many rights as men.

Live to Please Yourself Before Trying to Please Others

People often spend much of their time trying to please others and do not focus enough on making time for themselves. This concept is portrayed by Nora and her husband in the play A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. Starting with her father when she was younger and then with her husband when she was older, Nora has always lived to please another person.  Nora never found herself because she spent all of her time pleasing the men in her life. Her husband did not treat Nora like a real person, but rather like a doll as Nora put all of her energy in trying to make her husband happy by obeying all of his wishes. Nora focused her whole life on trying to make everyone happy but herself. Once Nora realized that she did not love her husband, she left her family to finally make herself happy, which she neglected to do her whole life.

            My family situation relates very closely to Nora’s. My mother was not happy for the majority of her life and she could never find a way to make herself happy in healthy ways. My mother was very unhappy in her marriage with my father and ended up abandoning her family, leaving my brothers and me alone with our father. My mother spent her whole marriage living to please my father and not herself. She, like Nora, had to leave everything she had known to find who she really was and to make herself happy. Escaping the marriage was the only way Nora and my mother could be free to live to please themselves and not everyone around them.

I believe that before people get married, both partners need to know how to make themselves happy without depending on another person. When in a relationship, both partners need to work on themselves and not live entirely to please the other person. In general situations, people need to spend more time making themselves happy and not spend as much of their time living to please everyone around them.

Different and Wrong Are Not Synonyms

James Rachels’ article about cultural relativism discusses the fact that different cultures have different beliefs and customs. Just because a culture does something differently than another culture, does not make them wrong. “We have to stop condemning other societies merely because they are different.” Each culture is made up of their own beliefs and customs which is what makes each culture unique and different from the others. If every culture believed the same things and did everything the same way, then there would be no diversity in the world. Every culture is supposed to be different, but just because the cultures are different, does not make another culture wrong.

            James Rachels mentions the Eskimos and their way of life. In the Eskimo culture, it is acceptable for a man to have multiple wives and for each of those wives to have relations with other men. The Eskimo society reflects the Igbo society in the story Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. In the Igbo society, the men could have multiple wives. Okonkwo demonstrated this idea by having many different wives and nobody in their culture thought anything of it. The Igbo society was accepting of that idea but our American culture would be completely opposed to it and would consider it wrong because the idea is so foreign to us and different from our beliefs. Having multiple spouses in our culture is uncommon and considered wrong to us. Although polygamy is frowned upon in the United States today, marriage besides traditional marriage is slowly becoming accepted. Gay marriage is a popular debate topic in the present day. While many people are still opposed to the idea because it is different to them and they believe it is wrong, many people are becoming more open to the idea. Some states are even going as far as passing laws allowing same sex marriage. People are now slowly realizing that just because same sex marriage is different from what they are used to, does not mean it is wrong.

Revenge is Self Destructive

While reading the story Wuthering Heights, I noticed the story’s subject of love, but more importantly than love, is the subject of revenge. Revenge started from the very beginning of the story and continued until the very end. Heathcliff is the character that demonstrates the showing of revenge the most. However, Hindley, I believe, started the cycle of revenge and was the cause for all of the times that Heathcliff took revenge on others. Hindley was the only male child of the family until Heathcliff was adopted in. When Heathcliff was adopted in, Hindley felt his empowerment being taken away. Mr. Earnshaw started to pay great attention to Heathcliff, taking some of the attention of Hindley away. Catherine also spent more time with Heathcliff and Hindley became jealous of that.  So after Mr. Earnshaw died, Hindley began the revenge cycle by taking revenge on Heathcliff. Hindley made Heathcliff act as a servant and degraded him so Hindley could take back his place of power in the household. As the characters grew older, Heathcliff began to take revenge on Hindley by encouraging Hindley’s drunkenness and gambling habits. Heathcliff made Hindley indebted to him by knowing Hindley could not repay the loans and Heathcliff then takes Wuthering Heights away from the person who harmed him. Heathcliff takes revenge on Edgar by forcing young Catherine, Edgar’s daughter, to marry Linton. After Linton dies, Heathcliff inherits the Thrushcross Grange property. Heathcliff took revenge on so many people just because of the harmful childhood events he was put through. Heathcliff could have chose to stop the revenge cycle but didn’t and ended up dying because he put all of his energy into taking revenge on everyone. Heathcliff took revenge on everyone to try to justify himself, but in the end it just wore him out and it didn’t make him any happier than he was before.

            The theme of revenge being self-destructive is very prevalent in present day life. Often times people hold grudges on other people and spend ways trying to take revenge on the other person. Many of those times, the person taking revenge still is not satisfied. People would be happier if they let the past times go and forgave the other person. Revenge is not always harmful to the victim, but also to the culprit their self, as Heathcliff demonstrates in the book. If people forgave others and did not focus on the past and on ways to get back at the other person, they would become much happier and could move on and improve their life. By trying to take revenge on other people, a person cannot move on from the past. In order to live a happier life, a person must not focus all of their time on revenge and must focus on letting go of past hardships.

Can a Person Control Their Fate?

People are fascinated with the unknown. Fate is one of the aspects of life that is a mystery to human kind. People have different views on fate. Some people may think that their fate is set in stone, while others believe that life is filled with chaos and whatever happens, happens. While people have their own opinion on fate, nobody positively knows how fate works. The real question that many humans are itching to find the answer to is “Can a person control their fate?”

The story of Oedipus is focused around fate. Oedipus proves that a person cannot control their own fate.  Oedipus goes to an oracle and finds out that his future will consist of killing his father and marrying his mother. Oedipus has good intentions and tries to escape his fate but the oracle came true anyway. In order to avoid this prophecy, Oedipus leaves Corinth and travels to Thebes. On the way to Thebes, Oedipus kills a man who made conflict with him on the path. That man he killed was his father; however he did not know it at the time. After he gets to Thebes, Oedipus answers a seemingly unsolvable riddle and becomes a hero and a king in reward. Oedipus married his own mother, fulfilling the prophecy. He, like not knowing it was his father who he killed, did not know that it was his mother he married either. Oedipus left his hometown and his family to avoid his fate, but the oracle came true anyway.

Oedipus, however, was never told that the parents who raised his were not his real parents, putting Oedipus at a disadvantage. If Oedipus would have known that the parents he grew up with were his adoptive parents, could Oedipus have been able to avoid his fate? Possibly. Since Oedipus had no idea that he was adopted in the first place, he assumed that those parents were the parents he was going to kill and marry. Oedipus did not know that the man he killed was his biological father and the woman he married was his biological mother. His adoptive parents almost controlled his fate by not telling him the truth. I think that if Oedipus would’ve known beforehand that he was adopted, he wouldn’t have left Corinth in the first place, so he couldn’t have done any action to make the oracle come true. Oedipus could have also avoided his fate though by deciding not to marry anyone and refraining from killing anyone as well.

I believe that there are things a person can do to control their fate. Like in Oedipus, he had a decision to leave. If he wouldn’t have left, his life could’ve been completely different. That happens in everyone’s life. Every decision a person makes will affect their lives in some way, maybe not in a drastic way like the decisions Oedipus made, but it will in some way. Currently as a high school senior, I am facing the decision with what to do with the rest of my life. I plan on going on to college to expand on my education. My life can change depending on which college I choose to go to. Depending on which college I choose, my life could be completely different compared to if I chose to go to a different one. I believe that people influence their fate by making their own decisions.

            Nobody knows for sure and everyone can think what they want about fate, but I believe that every decision a person makes affects their future and their fate. I therefore think that people do have a say in their fate and can slightly control it with the decisions they make.