Orwell’s Perspective

1. What is Orwell’s argument?

The English language is continually being corrupted due to unconscious writers that use it inappropriately. We should be conscious of what we are writing and have a concrete idea of what we are going to write about before jotting down the words that we believe may work. Political and economical distress are causes of the changes the English language confronts and suffers.

2. Identify two cases of irony.

•After exploring the possibility that our intent in changing the language is impossible and that the language’s decline follows our decline Orwell states that “it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.” After stating this he will employ the examples of five specific writers to support his ideas, somewhat ironical to what he had previously stated.
•As Orwell introduces the five examples of bad writing he states that the “five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad -- I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen -- but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer.” He realizes that if the five passages are not bad he will not be able to extract anything from them so he explains that they “are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples.” Orwell will later criticize these examples completely but he seems aware that the writers from whom he is citing must not be depicted as bad writers. But the reader understands that Orwell really wants to say that their writing is wrong, something that is highlighted by the ironical, a little below average, but fairly representative.

3. Define dying metaphors, pretentious diction, meaningless words.

Dying metaphors: Metaphors that have lost their original meaning. Authors who use them are not conscious of what they are talking about.

Pretentious Diction: Foreign words that are used in English instead of employing the appropriate English words. Foreign words are overused and loose their original meaning.

Meaningless Words: Words that have lost their meaning through overuse, are excessively vague and unnecessary.

4. Create ten steps to good writing according to Orwell.

•Understand what you are going to say before you say it.
•Say it in the simplest way possible.
•Revise what you wrote and if it reflects what you wanted to say.
•Use appropriate English words in your writing. This eliminates the use of pretentious diction.
•Avoid the passive, look for active alternatives for your writing.
•Your writing should reflect original thoughts, no clichés involved.
•Eliminate all words and sentences that don’t mean anything to your writing. Avoid fluff.
•Look for words that work well with what you want to say.
•Avoid jargon, scientific and foreign words and phrases by employing everyday English alternatives.
•“Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

Teaching The Lived

As I continued reading Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, I noticed how enthusiastic he is about the idea that we are all one, and the intricate relationship between poet and reader. After narrating an immense quantity of situations and jobs of the common people he has run into, he states that “the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time; / The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his wife; / And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them; / And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am” (317-321). I read this passage a couple of times until I deciphered several messages he has inscribed in those words. He is telling us how there are some people that are dead and are more alive than those that are alive, this is because their thoughts still exist and their names are still named. Sleep here appears as the state of dormancy which the individual experiences when he has lost his path, the path that leads to understanding the situation of others and not only thinking of oneself. In the end of this poem he shows how he is one of us, he is not an alien to mistakes and that young and old we keep doing the same mistakes in our lives. Another important aspect of these lines is how he uses a common everyday reality and routine, sleeping, to show how time passes but the essentials unite us and how important it is to value the mundane routine when contemplating our individual souls connection to all.

Another piece that impacted me was when Whitman stated that he is “A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest; / A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of seasons” (336-337). Whitman once again levels himself with the reader, a technique I believe he uses to support the good nature of his messages. Whitman repeats this over and over again, always with different approaches, but always with the same essence. He wants us to understand that he makes mistakes as we could previously see, and he wants us to know that his word isn’t the final word, he can still be taught even though he has lived a long life. This made me think of how the elderly become more and more clutching and stubborn about their ideas about life. They become more conservative about what they have built for themselves and they don’t want to change anything. They hope to maintain the status quo which has seemed to work for them in their lives. It becomes scary and uncomfortable to try to change anything in their lives because they don’t want to change, maybe this is because it is the only way they can maintain control before the visit of inevitable death, the annihilator of all power to change.

Present Is For The Conscious

As I dived into Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass I noticed how his poems directly focus on how to approach the reader, using repetition and explanations completely reflecting his consistent style. Whitman begins his poetry collection by embracing the reader as an equal to the poet. Whitman begins by stating: “I CELEBRATE myself; / And what I assume you shall assume; / For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.” (1-3) By leveling himself with the reader, Whitman shows how his topic will be all of us, because we are made of the same valuable material. Pure lines of empowerment continue as Whitman characterizes human nature as being pure and innocent, open to whatever inner yearnings will emanate from it. By exposing his humbleness in a simple yet powerful way, we are guided to follow his teachings in the first three lines of the poem. Whitman’s writing is vibrant, youthful, fresh and original, so different from any stale cliché that tries to unite humanity.

Another aspect of Whitman’s writing is his constant repetition, something I noticed in the third poem. He explains how the present is what really matters as “There was never any more inception than there is now, / Nor any more youth or age than there is now; / And will never be any more perfection than there is now, / Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.” (32-35) Whitman gives us new supporting ideas to the Carpe Diem concept by saying that there isn’t something of a valuable nature that the past and future can give and the present can’t. Using the same line construction Whitman states that there are new beginnings, young and elderly, perfection, and good and evil right now and that there isn’t more in the past and future. Whitman’s charmingly light yet profound poetry shares the basic concepts of Buddhist thought in a timeless yet split second fashion, pure magic.

In the first ten poems of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, we are given unique input in matters of life by dissimulating straightforward messages through the use of repetition and metaphors. I look forward to continue reading this piece which seems very promising.

Simply Looking For Love

As I finished reading Gustave Flaubert’s A Simple Soul over the weekend, I noticed how passionate and loving Flaubert’s protagonist, Felicite was towards everybody and everything. As Loulou becomes Felicite’s greatest love, Flaubert states that they “held conversations together, Loulou repeating the three phrases of his repertory over and over, Felicite replying by words that had no greater meaning, but in which she poured out her feelings.” (Ch. 4) In the first three chapters, I noticed how Flaubert uses complex sentences to both narrate his story in a free indirect style and build our perception of his characters. Here we see how Flaubert both continues his story about the parrot and Felicite, their complex relationship which isn’t more than another example of Felicite’s total, overwhelming love and shows us how Felicite was an open person who spoke through her feelings even when speaking to a wall. We are not told how she is but it becomes our task to stop and deduce her personality out of her actions. The book describes Felicite’s tragic life in a way that opens a more complex path for our minds to analyze (much akin to what we do in our own personal dilemmas) than using the lighter thought processes required to processing a straightforward story.

Flaubert’s descriptions of Felicite’s life are given to us in such a way for us to understand the process and for the author to connect independent ideas. He states that a “weakness came over her; the misery of her childhood, the disappointment of her first love, the departure of her nephew, the death of Virginia; all these things came back to her at once, and, rising like a swelling tide in her throat, almost choked her.” (Ch. 4) We are given the chance to reflect on what happens to Felicite independently when the event is being narrated, but in this sentence we are shown the condensed version, the overwhelming disastrous life Felicite has lived. This sentence makes us feel sorry for Felicite who is condemned by the commas to continue suffering. The list continues and so does Felicite’s sorrow.

When Loulou arrives from Fellacher’s shop we are given a description of his new appearance. Flaubert describes Loulou as “sitting bold upright on a branch which could be screwed into a mahogany pedestal, with his foot in the air, his head on one side, and in his beak a nut which the naturalist, from love of the sumptuous, had gilded. She put him in her room.” (Ch. 4) Flaubert has planned the new course his story will take. He includes the short sentence “She put him in her room” to now describe her room, the last setting of the story. The sentence is of a completely different length compared to the first, making the reader have a needed break from the complex plot and new insight that will later build the end of the book. This planning ahead that Flaubert single-handedly does immortalizes his sentences that simply sound right. His paragraph breaks are necessary to highlight the important but sometimes unnoticed sentences that are the soul to his writing. Doing so makes Felicite’s dramatic life be forever remembered and helps us, Flaubert’s entertained audience, become intensely impressed by his amazing writing about a person who was simply looking for love.

Simplicity, Punctuation And Characters

As I ventured into Gustave Flaubert’s A Simple Soul, I noticed how the author is able to give us a complete description of his plot and characters in a free indirect style, with a unique use of punctuation that reflects the importance of details and close attention. While reading I found myself wandering frequently through Flaubert’s complex sentences, showing me how the reader must be completely immersed in Felicite’s life in order to understand the complexity of it. Flaubert makes monotony and a simple life interesting, through his complex sentences from which you can’t eliminate or modify a word without changing the meaning of the whole. Flaubert states that “every Monday morning, the dealer in second-hand goods, who lived under the alley-way, spread out his wares on the sidewalk.” (Ch. 2) The author chooses to highlight this event that becomes his path to further describe Felicite’s surroundings and the people she lives with. In this passage in Chapter 2, I noticed how Flaubert chooses to change paragraphs in order to give a description of how days went by (“Every Monday morning”, “Every Thursday”) and further describe his characters. This transforms a monotonous tale into a short story full of complexity and vital importance.

Flaubert subtly builds the perception the reader must have about his characters. After saving Madame Flaubert from the angry bull he states that “Felicite took no credit to herself, and probably never knew that she had been heroic” (Ch. 2). Flaubert continues talking about what life after the bull incident had become for Madame Aubain, making this sentence become completely miniscule to the reader, yet quietly building brick by detailed brick the reader’s perception of Felicite. By using this technique, Flaubert impacts an unconscious reader who dives into the next paragraph. By the end of the chapter we have a concrete perception of Felicite’s character, necessary for Flaubert’s ultimate objective of making his character immortal, an impression of what has been up to now a tragic life.

Another aspect of Flaubert’s style is the use of punctuation. As Madame Aubain tries to escape the angry bull Flaubert narrates that “Madame Aubain finally slid into the ditch, after shoving first Virginia and then Paul into it, and though she stumbled several times she managed, by dint of courage, to climb the other side of it.” (Ch. 2) If you try to take out one comma of this sentence (which appears as a whole paragraph in the chapter) it completely changes the meaning of the sentence, and the process Flaubert is showing by forcing the reader to pause in the commas. It makes the sentence a process where the reader must slowly but hastily descend and come out of the ditch Madame Aubain is going into. Flaubert plays with the reader’s need to read what happened to Madame Aubain, makes us pause, thus helping us imagine it instead of swiftly noticing it.

Communication and Exposition

As I read Gary Lutz’s lecture, The Sentence Is a Lonely Place, I connected his ideas about sentences and their composition to what I have been reading and experiencing with writing lately. The first example of this intricate relationship between words in sentences is metafiction. In metafiction every single word counts and must count, for it to be good metafiction. Lutz states that good sentence writers are those who “seem to know that the words inside the sentence must behave as if they were destined to belong together—as if their separation from each other would deprive the parent story or novel, as well as the readerly world, of something life-bearing and essential.” Slutz’s writing reminded me of Dawkins’ style in The Selfish Gene, were he clearly identifies the units for evolution to be genes. In this lecture, Slutz defines the unit that expresses the essence of writing as words forming sentences, something completely different from words forming paragraphs, essays, or novels. The unit of writing according to Lutz is the sentence which has to be created by the words that “belong together” for that specific sentence. It seems to be the obligation of the writer to expose seemingly obligatory relationships between words to communicate ideas rather than having messages to be expressed by words that fit the message. This may well be the line that cuts off mathematical writing, the place where there is an obligation to write a word that fits the message from expository, beautiful, majestic writing, the place where words are needed to fit a feeling, where words become an obligation of the writer.

As Slutz describes some examples of the relationships between words, specifically the locations and changes between the places where individual letters are located we see the mathematical part of expository writing. There are a wide range of possibilities; however, you can decide to use alliteration, divide a sentence to create portions of repeated letters, play around with two repeated letters, give more or less emphasis to a part of the sentence, etc. Slutz describes writing “rich to the extent that the drama of the subject matter is supplemented or deepened by the drama of the letters within the words as they inch their way closer to each other or push significantly off.” The subject becomes a spectator for the sentence variety, word use and writing styles. The subject of a sentence isn’t more important that what a survival machine is for a gene, it is simply a way to continue being immortal. If the subject can’t be exploited by the relationship of the words that conform it, the subject isn’t appropriate, it isn’t a good survival machine. This perception of the art of writing is different from what I have studied, but only by a short glimpse into Slut’s perception I see a complete different art from what writing for me once was. Now I understand and feel more comfortable with appreciating writing as an exposition of a writer’s creativity and genius rather than just a simple channel of communication.

Building An Unfinished Mystery

As Thomas Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49, comes to an end we are shown the nature of the title and the last bits of information that Pynchon wanted to include in his satirical, strange novel. I must say that I was disappointed when I read the last sentence of Pynchon’s novel: “Oedipa settled back, to await the crying of lot 49” (152). With this Pynchon leaves an open-ended novel which surely works with the difficulties in communication both between Oedipa with the world and the reader with the book. Pynchon gives the reader the opportunity to build the rest of the story in his own mind, to simply find the answer to the mystery as we weren’t allowed to know. We were Pynchon’s puppets in the book, the characters that have feelings but can’t create on what is being built in front of their eyes. They can see how Pynchon gives Oedipa the motives to be lost in the mystery, as she discovers that Pierce owned everything in town, all the businesses that were necessary to build his master joke.

In the Crying of Lot 49 Wiki webpage I found a video which shows the main problematic that the book deals with. It shows recurrent themes of the book like drug use, misunderstanding, and cultural aspects of 1960’s California to give us a representation of what the literal part of the book shows. The main adventures that Oedipa lives in the novel are portrayed in a way that my own mind was imagining them. The sudden changes in shots give the viewer a unique perspective of the events, there seems to always be more than the symbols employed to represent Oedipa’s adventures. The final shot shows the hammer of the auction, an accurate representation of Pynchon’s ending, the abrupt open-ended final.

Genghis tells Oedipa that they “say an auctioneer ‘cries’ a sale” (151). This gives the readers the last clue into the mystery, the crying of the auctioneer resembles that of the misunderstandings we have seen through the book. The problems that have been created due to the lack of information given to both Oedipa and the reader become a cry for information, for that feeling that Pynchon creates when leaving an open-ended novel for us. We are thus given the opportunity to observe and make fun of the adventures of a human being that has become fond in our hearts, while attacking this feeling of misunderstanding. Is life like a big misunderstanding of a simple event? Are we like miniscule Oedipas in our own, unique adventures? Is there a Pierce in our lives?

Background Information

As I began venturing Chapter 5 of Thomas Pynchon’s, The Crying of Lot 49, I knew I would need to have Wikipedia by my side in order to understand Pynchon’s words. It is simply too much information, that Pynchon’s narrator uses to build up his complex sentences, creating a unique paragraph out of simple, straight-forward content. As Oedipa runs away from Nefastasis’ home, Pynchon states that she “pattered down the steps into the street, flung a babushka over her license plate and screeched away down Telegraph” (87). What just happened to Oedipa is in essence simple, she ran away from the house of a man that was thinking of having sex with her, but Pynchon takes his readers to the next level. He incorporates a lot of background information.



I had already noticed in this sentence that I was kind of lost in Pynchon’s words. I concluded mid-sentence that I didn’t want to get lost as I had previously done in early chapters so I decided to not take the lame shortcut of continuing reading. I instead stopped and typed babushka in Wikipedia’s search engine. Babushka ended up being a headscarf scarf (as seen in the picture) or the title of a grandmother in Russia (as seen in the picture). This may seem to be one of the lame puns in the book, one that Pynchon wasn’t necessarily meaning to incorporate but it surely forces the young, unexperienced reader to use the available means in order to make sense out of his words.

Still, the sentence bothered me a little bit, I hadn’t quite deciphered everything I had the means to decipher. Telegraph was what was bothering me. I decided to type in Telegraph street in Wikipedia, finding out that it is a street “that begins, at its southernmost point, in the midst of the historic downtown district of Oakland, California and ends, at its northernmost point, at the southern edge of the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California.” From experience, I knew Pynchon knew his way around words, history and literature. Pynchon actually chose a particular, important street in California to put the house of one of his secondary characters to live in. California is known for being as avant gard and weird as this writer.

The Road To Immortality

In Chapter 4 of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 I noticed how the author targeted immortality and gave his insight about achievement-related immortality. Pynchon states that we are taught that America’s great inventors were those individuals which followed the rule of “only one man per invention“ (70).This idea of being taught that the big inventors received all the credit and that their lives revolved around these achievements ties with the idea of being left alone to discover, thus building up a perfect roadmap for inventors to follow. Pynchon shows that this is not true in the big companies, where great inventors get “stuck on some ‘project’ or ‘task force’ or team’ and started being ground to anonymity” (70). Pynchon makes fun of how we are an achievement-based society, where problems occur due to the necessity to be someone due to our actions, our obligation as individuals in a community to do something we are good at, hoping to receive all the credit for the innovative ideas we can come up with.

Pynchon also talks about how we think our death will make us immortal in a Gilgamesh kind of way, how we believe we will become immortal due to our actions. Oedipa states that it is as “if the dead even do persist, even in a bottle of wine” (79). It is this immortality belief, the patent-holder idea of achieving an immortal name which Pynchon talks about. His target is Oedipa who is characterized by her thinking simple concepts over and over again. We are shown how this whole thing of action driven immortality signifies nothing but a desperate, lame strategy to be something we can’t achieve otherwise, immortality. It is this kind of thoughts that build up Pynchon’s writing. The abstract reasoning and comical scenes build on a fact-based framework which gives the reader an opportunity to have a relaxed time with the book. How will Pynchon continue Oedipa’s adventures to become a business expert? What will become Pynchon’s satire main target?

Human Replacement

In Chapter 3 of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, I ventured through the difficult situations Oedipa Maas has now encountered when receiving her ex-boyfriend’s business and lawyer. Pynchon opens the chapter by characterizing Oedipa as a lonely person who was used by the men in her life, never making herself happy (Cinderella metaphor). The author says that “the stamp collection Pierce had left, his substitute often for her – thousands of little colored windows into deep vistas of space and time” (31). This subtlety used by Pynchon when informing the reader about the dwellings of his characters serves as a tool to get us inside the story, to make his words necessary instead of making long, useless descriptions. In one sentence, we are both informed of the poor relationships Oedipa has lived and of Pierce’s personality. It also helps us laugh about human replacement, an important target of Pynchon’s satire. He clearly makes fun of our materiality and selfishness, our poor relationships which he shows try to get something out of everything and everyone.

Another crucial moment in Chapter 3 happens after the end of the Jacobean play Oedipa and Metzger go to. Pynchon states that as Oedipa heard the word Trystero it “hung in the air as the act ended and all lights were for a moment cut; hung in the dark to puzzle Oedipa Maas but not yet to exert the power over her it was to” (58). Pynchon is clearly foreshadowing a crucial event in the book. An event I wasn’t able to not look up, I went on and typed Trystero in Google’s mighty search engine which swiftly turned up with results. My mouse went on and clicked on the first result, The Crying of Lot 49 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I immediately noticed that this Trystero business must truly mean something for Pynchon since it appeared in the first, introductory paragraph of Wikipedia’s article of the book. What I found really impressed me. Wikipedia stated that Oedipa found out about a conflict between the two mailing companies, “Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero (or Tristero). The former actually existed, and was the first firm to distribute postal mail; the latter is Pynchon's invention.” I wasn’t expecting this so I immediately closed my browser to not ruin the rest of the book, but now I am really wanting to open it up again, to take a shortcut into Pynchon’s climax.

A Grouping Of Concepts

As I continued venturing in Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49, I tried to focus my attention on anything that seemed to be a satirical perception of Oedipa’s surroundings. As Oedipa travels to San Narciso, CA (obviously making reference to San Francisco) Pynchon states that it was “like many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts – census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway” (13). This was my favorite sentence in the whole chapter because I felt it resembled my own way of thinking about people, events and objects. My brain, maybe all human brains, works by making a profile of the subject, which includes perceptions, characteristics and facts about it, thus making it easy to compare one subject to the other. It becomes a checklist kind of thing which works well when managing a database of a substantial quantity of the people I meet on a daily basis. The only difference with the description of San Narciso is that the author created a satirical over-simplification and generalization of a description, something Pynchon does exemplarily in this chapter.

This categorizing and grouping of concepts may be a too simplistic explanation for what we humans think about our species. It may be that our incapability to accept our simple, animal-like backgrounds which leads us to believe that we make decisions by completing difficult mathematical processes and tedious explanations to events. We expect humans to be of a complex nature to explain our superiority, but as I write these sentences I think we lean towards a simple brain framework which serves our cause-effect, grouped concepts kind of thinking. I like how Pynchon uses the grouping of concepts strategy to make fun of the monotonous feeling modernistic cities expel. The bottlenecked history of our world seems to be further closing, maybe even creating a single checklist of grouping characteristics. This may well be an explanation of the beauty of diversity.

Working Your Way Out

As the novel, The Crying Of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon began, I was lost in the multiple stories and non-linear narrations. As I realized that I was lost, halfway through the second paragraph, I decided to go back and try to give it a second shot. I then understood. The book is basically the story of a woman, Oedipa Mass, who just received a letter from a law firm about her ex-boyfriend’s death. His will, asked for her to manage his business, something she truly doesn’t know how to do, so she consults with her husband (who is a disk jockey). Pynchon then narrates that her husband recommends her to go to their lawyer, Mr. Roseman who suddenly asks her to run away with him, having no effect whatsoever on her.

These weird paragraphs captured my complete attention in a unique, torturous fashion. I never expected to be tormented by the words of a book that looked so simple, so weak and little, but it happened. Pynchon continued his narration with Oedipa, who now believes she was like Rapunzel and her ex-boyfriend, Pierce tried to climb up her hair but it was “when Pierce had got maybe halfway up, her lovely hair turned, through some sinister sorcery, into a great unanchored wig, and down he fell, on his ass” (11). Now I definitely knew something, Mrs. Mass was trying to run away from something that tormented her. She was trying to not let things build up so readily, so perfect and dreamed of. She was afraid of perpetuity, of living her whole life as the one who was rescued from the tall tower by the mighty, rich man.

Pynchon supports this conclusion in the next couple of sentences as he states that “all that had gone on between them had really never escaped the confinement of that tower” (11). It was this defining moment of the relationship between the two individuals that lead to their breakup. Pierce was simply too busy buying the world for Oedipa that she decided to leave him, but she was ironically left his business to manage. The fake hair became her way out of the unlivable, charmless situation she had gotten into with Pierce, and it was the mighty tower, the one which didn’t let him in, her powerful ego. I wonder where will Pynchon lead us with this story and what his final message is going to be. It felt a bit like reading a modern fairytale written by someone locked up in a mental institution.

The Unit Definition

The final chapter of The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, gives us new insight into what he targeted his book to do and the definition of the life units he uses to expose his thinking. As Dawkins talks about the relationship between parasitical individuals with their hosts he states that “a parasite whose genes aspire to the same destiny as the genes of its host shares all the interests of its host and will eventually cease to act parasitically” (245). It basically shows how the future, the immortality of a parasite, will make the dependant individual share and use his energy to fulfill the reproduction and living requirements of the other until they become an individual. This reminded me of the beginning of Michael Jackson’s, This Is It, where the artists that were casting to be part of Michael Jackson’s last performances in London expressed their idolizing feelings towards him. The obligation to make everything come out perfectly for Michael Jackson seemed to be one of the huge themes in the movie, a similar trait to the parasitical creatures Dawkins describes.

A concept that I found extremely interesting in this chapter was the idea of bottlenecked individuals which started and ended (when reproducing) in a single celled survival machine. Dawkins mentions that “vehicles that evolved a bottlenecked life prospered, and became more discrete and vehicle-like” (265). The species which were able to become bottlenecked individuals, those which reproduce by single cell identical duplication, work in an efficient unit-like fashion. This helps mutations to work their way through generations and maintain that unit idea in the living creature. The individual’s existence (what maintains genes from going back to the primeval soup environment) is the dependence of replicated cells to their cousin cells.

Defining key terms for this book, limiting his words for the reader to fully appreciate his descriptions, seem to play a vital role in Dawkins’ writing. One of the important concepts to understand is the unit he uses for life and evolution. In this concluding chapter, Dawkins explains how the community and individual reproduction are too general to observe the specifics in phonotypical traits and how the ultimate concept to understand life’s units is the replicators. As his description of the “immortal coils” ends, he states that “the only kind of entity that has to exist in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator” (266). This statement doesn’t need any more explanation or supporting from Dawkins’ side, it has become obvious through the examples he exposed in his writing that we are truly empty membranes without these magical, but indeed selfish individuals.

Macbeth: The Example Of The Unfortunate Memes

The concept of memes that Dawkins gives his readers in Chapter 11, Memes: the new replicators, is one I truly enjoyed and closely related with the adventures of Macbeth. The definition Dawkins gives for memes, as being parts of culture which “propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (192). The idea of having a new evolutionary process in the concepts that surround us, even in our beliefs (as Dawkins so passionately explains his conclusions on believing in a God due to the immense psychological appeal) is something I find very interesting due to its modernistic approach to evolution.

Dawkins sticks to the needed characteristics he talked about in Chapter 2 in order for an entity to become a replicator, which are: “longevity, fecundity and copying-fidelity” (194). The author goes through each one of these characteristics explaining how thoughts are truly a form of replicators. Dawkins is able to maintain a Formal-Informal register even as he talks of how it was troublesome to conclude how memes could have copying-fidelity. “Here I must admit that I am on shaky ground. At first sight it looks as if memes are not high-fidelity replicators at all” (194). He writes as if he is truly trying to think, in a conversational mode to the reader in order to decipher the concept. This makes the piece flowing, entertaining and engaging, giving us a moment to rest our racing, about-to-explode mind. At the same time unfolding how Dawkins comes up with the interesting conclusions we have enjoyed throughout the book. This break is short however, for we are immediately driven to continue moving our eyes and minds at higher velocities through explanations that bring Dawkins to conclude that memes are high-fidelity replicators. Our highly creative author states that you have to break thoughts into specific pieces and understand that a thought ends up being an interpretation of a previous idea which carries the essence but not the identical, specific details.

This immortality of ideas and concepts that the author explains is vastly more influential than the gene immortality for reproducing individuals. Dawkins states that if “a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on [. . .] if the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain” (192). This rapid movement of ideas is obviously more stable than genes which suffer a 50% loss in each generation. I began thinking of the meme immortality entity in the story of Macbeth where we see that the witches prediction influences not only Macbeth’s doings but those of his wife and his followers. The whole plot revolves along the communication of Macbeth’s future. The decisions that are made due to this predestination build up the tragedy which ultimately serves as an example of this same kind of immortality. The immortality of thought, the amazing power of all spoken and written means, the ultimate replicators of life.

Individuals Add Up

In Chapter Ten of Richard Dawkins’, The Selfish Gene, the reader is exposed to new understandings of the relationship between an individual and his community. Dawkins begins by explaining the selfish need of individual animals to get in the middle of their herd in order to reduce the “domain of danger by trying to position himself in a gap between other individuals” (168). I find it interesting how the thought of “its not going to be me” completely summarizes this selfish behavior. The scientific explanation Dawkins gives the reader to understand an animal’s behavior may seem too harsh, too scientific, but it makes complete sense. The effect Dawkins’ words have on a reader may be difficult due to the innate need of our hearts and minds to find feeling and morality behind these theories, but they are cold yet logical explanation of the events. It is our tendency to look for a softer explanation of things, the animals may be accompanying each other, they may be looking for food together, or maybe they simply like each other. The author repeatedly shows how this mentality is erroneous and misleading. It is our selfish genes which make us have selfish actions.

After going through a numerous quantity of examples Dawkins shows that “members of different species often have much to offer each other because they can bring different ‘skills’ to the partnership” (181). Within a species or between different species of animals, there is a constant necessity to lie on each other’s shoulders in order to survive. This interdependence can also be seen in our human, modern world as we can observe in the article, Nobel Prize For Chemistry Of Life, by Victoria Gill. The BBC News article talks about the recent award to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath from the Laboratories in Cambridge (UK), Yale University (US) and Weizmann Institute (Rehovot, Israel). The article shows how this year’s Nobel prize in Chemistry “is to be shared equally between the three scientists, who all contributed to revealing the ribosome's huge and complex molecular structure in detail.” (BBC News) International research in different fields is absolutely necessary for our scientific, medical, economic, social and political development. It is special to see how three different individuals from different backgrounds can work together and share such an important award as are the Nobels in the science field. This works as a perfect example of how, the “mighty, developed” humans can also share that animal tendency of working with each other selfishly in order to survive or in this case win a prize.

Dividing It Up… Over Time

Lying For Immortality

Chapter 8 of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene uncovers new thoughts and conclusions on the subject of child to parent lying, the war of generations. The game Dawkins plays with the idea of competition within brothers is extremely alarming and grotesque, even though it all genetically makes sense. The gained survival probability when killing one of the brothers, will make the selfish gene carrier survive over his altruistic brother. It becomes a matter of time before the only gene in the gene pool is the selfish gene, the message that makes the individual kill and survive. As the author describes how the mother bird will feed the hungriest child by the volume of chirping, he states that all children would be fed equally, until they are full, “in the best of all possible worlds, if individuals did not cheat” (130). The higher survival probability when the bird chirps louder to get more food than its siblings, will eventually kill off the birds who do not lie by chirping louder, or who do not have any energy to chirp from being underfed, making the gene which makes the bird chirp louder survive in the gene pool. It is the simple logic which attracts the reader to keep reading the book, not for didactic means but for the sense of observing otherwise complex situations.

As Dawkins concludes his chapter, after making the reader reflect on many approaches to the idea of the “winner” in the battle of generations, we can see how he gradually used his chapter in order to bring his final conclusion into existence. He states that “what will finally emerge is a compromise between the ideal situation desired by the child and that desired by the parent” (139). This is due to the needed balance between the two in order for the gene to survive both as a young individual and as a parent. If the gene works to be a prosperous baby but not as a successful parent the gene looses. It then becomes the obligation of the gene to work as a successful liar in order to survive. If he is able to cheat on his parent as a child sometimes and also catch the child lying as a parent, the survival machine survives giving immortality through lies, the tools for that extra survival probability.

As a final comment, Dawkins tells us that if there “is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature” (139). This perfectly fits with his idea of showing the reader a way of looking at people as the battleground of gene trial and error by following the survival of the fittest and show that we must be more aware of our effects on other individuals because our survival nature is truly despicable. What survives (and in this case we are the best example) is what lies and lacks morality, the end (survival) justifies whatever means (lying). I believe that humanity’s evolution depends on our efforts to diminish differences amongst race, sex, financial power, abilities and social classes and stimulate unity not only among humans but of humans with nature and our planet earth. The narcissistic tendencies of the survival of the most egoistic falls flat when the only solution is to unite efforts against years of unfettered financial and ecological abuse. Today anything that happens anywhere is likely to affect life millions of miles away. For example the raising of world wide petroleum prices by the largest petroleum producing nations (the selfish gene theory) affected the price of transportation for basic articles such as wheat that caused strikes in India, Mexico and African nations because of the rising costs of wheat staples such as bread. Many countries stopped industrial production to slow down fuel costs decreasing the profits of petroleum rich nations, so the selfish gene did themselves in. Another personal life example is when I bred canaries, the weaker baby canaries were sometimes “adopted” by the stronger female canaries and survived, while what looked like the stronger babies died because of inadequate mothering from their otherwise healthy mothers. In history the biggest changes come from great bravery from certain individuals (altruistic gene pools) that cost them their lives but changed the lives and dreams of all who witnessed their amazing lives.

Programming Selfish Survival

Self-interest seems to be the engine for development in Richard Dawkins’, The Selfish Gene. In Chapters 5 and 6 Dawkins exposes his beliefs on the programming genes make for the development of their survival machine. He states that all genes can do “is set it up beforehand; then the survival machine is on its own, and the genes can only sit passively inside” (52). He makes it obvious why genes can’t control the body they are in, due to the extremely slow communication he compares to that our planet would have with a planet in Andromeda, 200 light years from Earth. The genes are left with no other option than to try to use likes and dislikes to guide us through our lives for their survival. As I read this section, I felt as if inside every particle of my body was an individualistic piece that is searching for survival in my well-being and reproduction. It is as if I was programmed to make a message survive, something not to be taken in the philosophical definition of a life statement or something of that nature, but truly a message to survive.

The purpose of genes, as I can see from Dawkins’ perception is to program another body that serves as a protective capsule to surpass the barriers of life and survive in the existence and reproduction of copies. This road to immortality genes pick, by creating copies of their message in future generations of the body that guarded the original gene in the body of his carrier, is similar to Gilgamesh’s way to perpetuate himself in the actions, the history of his decisions. The history the genes have to leave behind in order to become immortal is by definition a message that works for the survival of the body that has to reproduce in order to carry its descendant. If it is for the benefit of the gene’s survival he could make “a body more likely to save somebody from drowning than its allele would” (62). It will probably be more beneficial for the gene to drown the other individual unless it is one of his descendants. Through emotional appeals to certain events, genes are able to program the carrier’s life to make it the most beneficial for them.

Another idea that I found interesting in these chapters was Dawkins’ description of human interests in pacts that are beneficial for all. He states that even in “human pacts there is a constant danger that individuals will stand to gain so much in the short term by breaking the pact that the pressure will be overwhelming” (73). The author uses different subjects (specially genes and humans) to generalize interesting conclusions of selfish behavior. Through the chapter we see how Dawkins changes the subject of his conclusions from the genes to the human individuals in order for us to see examples and make us reflect on our daily life encounters with human dilemmas. Readers are guided to think that the self-interested motives for our actions are due to our nature, our genes, sharp promoters of selfish survival. It is interesting to meditate on the possibility that we are each one of us, the victorious end result of thousands of years of the most fascinating microscopic warfare. Yet, when one looks at the difficult state of affairs for the majority of human masses who suffer dire poverty, lack of basic necessities, and are vulnerable and suffer daily, one truly wonders who are these “winners”.

Created By Selfishness

As I continued my ventures through Richard Dawkins’, The Selfish Gene, I acquired new insight into the perception of ancestry and the true, individual units of evolutionary life. An idea that caught my attention exposed the concept that the individually acquired knowledge and characteristics are individually lived up to, they are not genetically transferred. The final idea being that “each new generation starts from scratch” (23). This shows how each individual is independent to what his ancestors and genes have to say about it. The way in which Dawkins is able to limit the boundaries of genes affecting our individual traits is showing the path for his altruist and selfish genes theory to take place. The way he has characterized an individual as a composition of trials which can easily be disposed of, in order to support the “survival of the fittest” is similar to The Handbook of Epictetus, in the idea that in the end everything is crucial to the development of a master play. The Selfish Gene may not be a predestination based book but it surely shows that everything that makes us up, will eventually lead to the evolution of the gene, always applying the “survival of the fittest”.

Another interesting part of the chapter is when Dawkins develops the idea of a selfish and altruist gene. He states that “at the gene level, altruism must be bad and selfishness good” (36). The difference between the altruist and selfish gene comes down to the difference in survival rate it will have. We can see it at the individual level with the example of the bird that sings to tell the others that a predator is close. He will tend to be killed off by the predator due to the lower survival rate. Due to the competition to be the dominant gene in order to survive, you must do everything it takes to have that extra edge, in order to be part of the next generation’s sequence. There is no room for altruism if you want to survive.

We see this recurrent message once again at the DNA level. The author states that the “true ‘purpose’ of DNA is to survive, no more and no less” (45). We are thus assured that what is best ideologically (help the poor, weak and incapable) will not survive at the genetic level. There is an obligation in evolution, in natural selection, to do what is needed in order to be valuable for the DNA sequence to take you in. This competition that happens in the genetic level can also be seen in the human, social group level. I often see people who are entirely devoted to finding something that will make them more likely to be accepted in social groups or clubs that require certain characteristics. Is the struggle to fit in valuable if it isn’t for survival? Where will Dawkins take us with this new provoking point of view?

Taught Vs. Predestined

As I began reading Richard Dawkins’, The Selfish Gene, I found it interesting how he is gradually able to state his conclusions with scientific support in a formal-informal register that lets the readers open to his ideas. In the first chapter he invites us to “try to teach generosity because we are born selfish” (3). Even though the reader may believe that human nature is sacred and perfect, even altruistic, it is hard to not notice the authority in his writing. I was immediately transformed into an open-minded reader, trying not to judge his ideas, it is an interesting strategy for the purpose of persuading his readers. This predetermined selfish beings, as we are classified, should become aware, as Dawkins states, that teaching is needed in order to try to become generous. It is an interesting approach to our human deficiencies, our needy self-centered egos that can only be shut down through teachings of generosity.

Due to the higher survival rate of a selfish individual or gene compared to an altruistic one there is a higher chance that through mutations the selfish one will survive we are left to confront the idea that we are natural selfish genes. Even though what Dawkins is concluding might sound a little extremist he immediately limits his thoughts to the concept that it might “just be more difficult to learn altruism than it would be if we were genetically programmed to be altruistic” (3). This kind of writing is absolutely appropriate to the final goal his writing is trying to achieve by limiting his thoughts in order for the reader to not be carried away into extracting the wrong conclusions. As a reader, I’m still waiting for Dawkins to uncover his main plot but from the first two chapters I was able to observe a different kind of writing which is gradually making the reader more engaged with it’s teachings.

Even though it is a different approach to what we have witnessed in other pieces such as Candide, Epictetus’ Handbook, and Slaughterhouse-Five there is some overlapping, as the difference between the idealistic and the confronting human being. Dawkins states that “we may frequently behave selfishly as individuals, but in our more idealistic moments we honor and admire those who put the welfare of others first” (9). This reminds me of Candide who lived supporting Pangloss’ thinking that “all is for the better”. The disappointment he confronts as he realizes how unfair our world is, is completely against what he believes in when not having to suffer life’s complex situations. The mediocre idealist in my opinion should no be heard, only the one that can stand up and act accordingly to what he believes in should be looked up to. It is then the obligation of the idealist to accept certain crude realities of our nature, as Dawkins is doing a the beginning of his book, to create a theory that can be supported and lived up to.

The Final Solution

As I read the final section of Candide I was glad to find a message, a life statement contrary to what Voltaire had made fun of through the novel. Even though teaching is not the main objective in Voltaire’s piece, he is able to leave the idea that working things out is the true objective in life. As the Turk farmer said, “we find that the work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice and poverty” (143). As I wrote in my previous post, Changing For The Best, what we make of life’s blessings and unfortunate events is what differentiates a Gandhi or Dalai Lama from a regular person who is overwhelmed by life’s rapid shifts. This different approach to life, a look at the bigger picture, society and one’s possible role in aiding its evolution through productive work is what is necessary to overcome boredom, vice and poverty. One must find deep meaning for the journey. Voltaire shows this change in the mentality of his characters as a community change. The final message that we are not alone in the quest to overcome our inability to accept is necessary to include a fitting ending to his novel, which captured the mentality of many types of human beings: from the completely disappointed and depressed Martin to the extremely positive and light Pangloss.

Something that caught my attention as I read the last chapter of the book was the drastic change between the predetermined Pangloss (“all is for the better”) to the one that accepts the challenge to work in order to overcome life’s difficulties. As he discussed with Candide about why man was put in the garden of Eden he concludes that the final purpose was for him “to work, in fact; which proves that man was not born to an easy life” (143). Pangloss gives a new understanding to his life statement, he now accepts that man was indeed supposed to accept the unfortunate events of life but that it was up to the individual to make the best he could out of it.

Martin also undergoes a drastic transformation at the end of the book. As he discussed with Candide their adventures with Count Pococurante, I noticed a change in his negative, disappointed attitude that characterized him throughout the novel. Martin informs us that Plato once stated “that the best stomachs are not those that reject all food” (124). Martin is now an individual who believes that not liking anything in life is disastrous, he has realized how disappointing it is to be disappointed about everything in life and shows how nature embraces all. Are we supposed to live without any appreciation for what life has brought us? Voltaire is finally showing a way out of the limits of dry, bitter, cynical criticism and granting everyone a path towards a more fertile, warmer look at human life and society.

Changing For The Best

An interesting gradual change we see in Candide is how his perception about the idea that “all is for the better” is completely transformed. As I have talked about in previous posts, Candide had been supportive and obstinate about Pangloss’ teachings even when living hard moments. In Chapters 18 and 19, we see clear examples of Candide’s disappointments about these teachings. As Candide encounters the slave who is missing a hand and a leg in Surinam, he says as if speaking to Pangloss: “A scandal like this never occurred to you! But it’s the truth, and I shall have to renounce that optimism of yours in the end” (86). This answers one of the big questions I have had in my mind. Voltaire is definitely showing a big change in Candide’s belief system, due to all the suffering he has lived and witnessed, in order to convince the reader how illogical it is to live thinking that “all is for the better”. Voltaire is belittling the idea of not having free will, he is trying to show that due to the atrocities we see it is impossible that they are happening in a predetermined fashion. His descriptions describe the idea of fate as gruesome and cruel.

Candide is also able to reach new conclusions about his daily adventures, as how he reacts to the loss of the majority of sheep that were carrying his new treasures back to Europe. He reflects on “how perishable are the riches of this world. There is nothing solid but virtue” (85). This is an interesting reaction to the great loss he has just experienced. This is a technique used by Voltaire in order to make the reader confident that Candide’s process of transformation is beginning. We now see Candide as an individual who is gradually realizing that maybe it isn’t true that “all is for the better”, but that our actions, which are chosen by us produce the ability to open new paths and options for us. Our actions determine our lives and not fate.

In the New York Times article Best of All Possible Worlds, Updated for the Paris Stage, I read some of the history Candide has as a world musical, and the way directors work out Voltaire’s satire. I find it interesting how the modern musical takes place in 1950’s America, and how it makes fun of the modern ideas and situations instead of recurring to the specific story Voltaire once wrote. Changing the Auto-da-fé in Portugal into an appearance with the Ku Klux Klan torch carriers and sailing from France to New York instead than from Spain to Argentina there are differences that change the setting but don’t alter the general objective of comparing fate to free will. One could argue, for the sake of being provocative that the fated part of life is the array of choices offered to an individual via genetics, family, historical moment, race, sex, social standing, physical abilities or ailments, etc. and that free will would be what you do with the specific set of limitations or favorable circumstances that each one of us is born into. Our real power would be in exercising our free will to transform that which was unfavorable into amazing, such as Helen Keller, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln did with their fated circumstances.

For The Best…

The determination of Candide to continue devoting his life to the idea that all is for the best is amazing. In previous posts I have talked about Cunégonde’s disappointment towards the teachings Pangloss had once so devoutly expressed and the beginnings of Candide’s realization that those teachings could not be true due to the great suffering he had lived. In Chapters 16-17 we see the obstinate Candide, Voltaire is now prepared to show his great disappointment and rejection of people that agree that all is for the best. Being kidnapped by the Oreillons, Candide states that no “doubt all is for the best, but I must say it is very cruel to have lost Lady Cunégonde and to be skewered by the Oreillons” (71). Voltaire is making fun of Candide, showing how even Candide thinks that this is not the best that could be happening. It is interesting how the author is able to make fun of him in his speech, the essence of Candide is shown to be simplistic and illogical in his words. How can all be for the best if you just lost the love of your life, your true single purpose and you are just to be eaten by a crazy group of people?

Candide also shows an appreciation for nature when problems are finally resolved. He says that when “all is said and done, there is a sterling goodness in unsophisticated Nature” (72). According to Candide, things may not work out exactly as you expect them to come out but they will be eventually be resolved and all will be good. In the link below you can find a short clip of the musical production of Candide. Between 0:29 and 0:54 there is a representation of the teachings of Pangloss and his brainwashed students which I found very comical. You can see how this part of the musical shows the four students to be absolutely absorbed in the words they are saying, it seems that what they’re telling is the most obvious truth they have ever had the opportunity to say. The representation is very credible since it shows the general image seen in Candide’s words about Pangloss’ teachings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPClzIsYxvA

Voltaire has great timing, he tells us only what we need to know in order to understand that he will continue his master joke. As Candide expresses his feelings towards Eldorado he states that it is “probably the country where all goes well [. . .] I often noticed that all went badly in Westphalia” (77). The comparison Candide makes between his old and new settings, is important for the reader to understand that the main character is still living based on the same old framework, even though he still criticizes what he lived in the past. We can observe a double-sided perception Candide has about this idea that all is for the better: he accepts it, and lives with it in his mind but his heart forces him to reject the horrible moment he has been through. It is as if you try to believe something that deep down you know not to be true, when in fact you have suffered immensely and it has become impossible to wrap this horrendous, stark reality into that light context.

Wealth: The Difference Shifter

Sometimes, when we stop getting so obsessed and intense about reaching our goals, the energy starts to naturally flow and we receive more than what we ever expected. There are other situations that we have to be flexible, we have to learn how to use different strategies to reach our goals. In Candide, Voltaire is able to use Cacambo, Candide’s slave, in order to make fun of voltiarepas, people who use both opposite views to be rewarded to the maximum level from all sides have no morality. Cacambo states that when “you don’t get what you expect on one side, you find it on the other. Fresh sights and fresh adventures are always welcome” (62). This describes an individual who doesn’t stand up for what he is and believes in but uses everyone and everything for his benefit. Someone who does stand for what he thinks will be living a life full of meaning and character. It is interesting how this character brings a new workspace for Voltaire in the book. The character is passionate and tries to advise the easiest way to get out of situations. Will he remain loyal to Candide, or is he going to follow his advice and use the circumstances?

One of the satire targets in Chapters 14-15 is the military behavior. Our society sometimes forgets the human side of each soldier that fights for a country, the limitations and terror of war life as well as the distancing from their loved ones. As Candide and the Baron, brother of Cunégonde, meet we are shown the human side of this priest-soldier life. The natural side to family encounters as they “fell back in amazement, and then embraced each other and burst into tears” (64). Voltaire is both showing a reality of everyday life (the necessity of family even when at war) and making fun of how serious a military institution becomes, protecting a country’s ability to express its power through enlisted people who are forced to follow very difficult orders. This is only one of the examples of satire targeting in these chapters. We can also see how Voltaire continues making fun of people who live thinking that all is for the best and the idea that the power is carried by family.

Through the example of Candide killing the brother of Cunégonde the reader is assured that Voltaire is making fun of family disunity when power comes available. As the Baron makes fun of Candide thinking that he could marry the Baron’s sister we are shown how family unity is in danger when an integrant wants to marry a person from a different social class. We also see how Candide is still compromised with Pangloss’ teachings even after the suffering he has gone through. As Candide responds to the Barons insults he mentions that his “master Pangloss used to tell me that men are equal; and I shall marry her without hesitation” (67). We are confronted by a situation where differences in wealth change the perception that all men are created equal. This is something that we could also see in Slaughterhouse-Five, where Vonnegut’s equality among men is shared in the idea that life is destined to happen a certain way for specific events to happen, but there is a determining difference between the role each person is assigned to take. The relationship between Billy and Valencia shows this through the win-win situation that is shown. Valencia gains a relationship with a man who accepts her physical problems due to the substantial change in social class he will have if he marries her. In a way, Voltaire is showing how ridiculous life becomes if we believe that suffering is inevitable and meant to happen. There is an obligation to analyze as a reader how this equality is seen through Voltaire’s eye, a topic to be watched carefully in the following chapters.

Conclusion Of The Thousand Miseries

In the character of the old woman in Candide, we find an individual who has developed an understanding of life, and gained a certain moral authority on other people’s lives, through her misery. The hardships the old woman lived became the reason for Candide and Cunégonde to trust and follow her advice. The old woman is also an interesting character for the way she feels about life. Even though she vividly describes the horrible tortures and events that have happened in her life, she is still fond of life. She states that she has wanted “to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life” (57). The strong pull life has on our souls, our desire to live makes it easier for one to continue fighting, to not surrender under the burden of misery. Can we truly give up the only thing we were all generously gifted and that we will all have to eventually surrender any moment, like it or not? There is still this necessity to grip life harder and strive for our goals, for a better present that is yet to come.

The old woman gives the author a voice by which he criticizes people who live thinking that all is for the better in a rather different way as he has done so far in the book. Through the events that happen in Cunégonde’s and Candide’s life we are clearly shown the horrible and unjust events that can happen in any individual’s life, but through the voice of the old woman, we are shown the direct message Voltaire has wanted to carry throughout the whole novel. She says to Cunégonde and Candide as they are in the boat going to Buenos Aires that if you “persuade each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find even one who has not often cursed his life and told himself that he is the most miserable man alive, you can throw me into the sea head first” (57). It isn’t how horrible life has been for us, what unites us is the way we react to all the horrible moments of life. Finally what unites us is the thought that we are the unluckiest, the most miserable. What hope is there then in the boat of humanity, the boat of the “most miserable”? We are shown an ugly truth of our behavior as a community, the thought that we are all obsessed with our own little fate with absolutely no conscious awareness of the need to help our fellow inmates on the planet, instead we constantly compare and measure our drama with theirs. This division, this distance between me and you, and us and them, is the beginning of all our problems, all our wars. It is no longer a question of whether all is for the better, it’s more like if we continue to be so self absorbed and unconscious, it all inevitably will become the worse for all of us.

Another interesting approach the old woman gives us, relates to the way we, as individuals, work out how to keep on living after the complex situations we have had to overcome. She asks us why “be eager to grow on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away” (57). This gives us the needed insight to conclude that Voltaire uses this character to make us open up to the possibility that what we all truly need as individuals is a way to share ourselves, to let our spirits say whatever they need, to continue living, to unload and share our burdens to start a true healing process. I noticed that in this question, the old woman poses how our hearts are the victims of the repressed sentiments we have always wanted to say, the yelling that has been kept someplace in our hearts ready to be freed. The heart of a suffering individual is waiting for the serpent of secrets to be killed, before it eats the heart, the true life force, completely.

The Even Worse

As I read Chapters 8-11 of Candide, I was interested in how Voltaire is able to re-introduce the character of Cunégonde through Candide’s journey. This portrays the “bobbing up-and-down, up-and-down” we saw in Slaughterhouse Five, the concept of good and bad moments our society is so used to. Voltaire once again shows his disgust for the idea that all is for the best when Cunégonde says, “Pangloss cruelly deceived me when he told me that all is for the best in this world” (43). Voltaire repeatedly shows that the much hated life concept will lose all its followers as they confront the worst events in their lives. We are to weak and our acceptance is partial when affronting a bad moment. We accept ideals when we are enjoying good times and believe we will be able to continue on a soft road, but when our feelings and rational minds are forced to live these horrible moments, we immediately crumble under the burden of these challenges. These are the true test of our souls, our beliefs, our mental truths.

When in trouble, I often dream of another kind of relationship between individuals and their environment. A bit of an utopia fantasy to soften the brutal reality to believe that there are other possibilities and realities where horrible events and complicated situations don’t happen. Voltaire also considers these thoughts unworthy as Candide states that he expects the new world to be “the one where all goes well; for I must admit that regrettable things happen in this world of ours, moral and physical acts that one cannot approve of” (48). This is exactly what I feel when trying to confront a situation with a positive attitude believing that all is for the best. My rational and emotional parts are forced to believe that maybe the higher order/intelligence that decides what is for the best got confused or is creating situations and circumstances we don’t quite understand because we don’t know the whole larger picture, we only have our small, short sized view. Knowing everything may somehow make sense of all the insanity.

We are accustomed to comparing our lives, both the good and bad moments with that of the person beside us, be it friend or foe. It is a natural tendency that makes it harder for us to build a simple relationship between the events of our lives and our reactions towards them. We are forced to see how other people are doing in their dramas, making us be constantly disappointed or impressed by our own lives. Voltaire shows how a person who lives by the idea that all is for the better is motivated to continue living by this ideal, when seeing others that have lived even worse moments, as Cunégonde relates that she has been “so terribly unfortunate in my affairs, that I have lost almost all hope” (48). As Cunégonde states this, Voltaire gives her the opportunity to see how another person, the old woman, has lived more horrid moments, confirming the idea that by seeing another’s misfortune we are fueled to continue living, finally appreciating our own lot in life and accepting, at least partially, that all is for the better. That concept may completely change and become distorted when the tables are turned and one is forced to live the short, horrendous end of the stick. I believe that the only way to really understand the complete mystery of life, its majesty and its horror, we must learn to contemplate life from a non judgmental present, creating thus a constant state of reverence and awe, that is the realm of the enlightened: the Buddhas and Christs among us and forever latent within each one of us.

Optimism In Voltaire’s Eyes

The positive thought of “everything is for the best”, that Voltaire so deeply criticizes is the fuel to the sixth and seventh chapter. The opening discussion point is the astonishing death of Pangloss, the philosopher. This event completely demoralizes Candide who questions the life statement he has lived to up to this point in the book. “If this is the best of all possible worlds [. . .] what can the rest be like?” (37). This is the game Voltaire is slowly introducing to us, his novel is based on making fun of the possibility of a person truly accepting a life that is cemented on the belief that all is for the best, that horrible moments are simply meant to be. This is becoming clearer through the pages that show how a positive attitude is slowly destroyed by horrible events that are inevitable through the journey.

The effects that Pangloss’ death have on Candide, change the course of his beliefs, the ideas he once stood up for are crumbling into pieces. Candide tells us the following after Pangloss’ death: “but when it comes to my dear Pangloss being hanged [. . .] I must know the reason why” (37). The theory Voltaire criticizes looks perfect on paper, the belief that everything is perfect and meant to be, is shown to be a way to free the individual’s mind from the catastrophes of life. It becomes the obligation of each individual to apply this theory in his personal life but you need to factor in the inevitable negative and sometimes absolutely illogical events that happen in one’s life. When it is our turn to suffer we can’t understand what is happening, why if everything is meant to be for the best do we have to suffer? Is living to the thought that everything is for the best, truly optimism or is it a simplistic, mediocre way to take refuge behind a weak lie, that all we live has to happen, that we are powerless in fate’s hands?

Voltaire quickly changes the suffering events in his novel to keep showing examples of how this life statement crumbles when being obligated to live terrible events by going back to the optimistic Candide. The one that feels that his “past life seemed like a nightmare and the present moment a happy dream” (39). We are back to the show Voltaire is plotting, the show that shows an individual who falls back to the theory his writer hates when confronting the good moments of his life but is thrown back to the lamenting and questioning when confronting the bad moments. This chapter leaves one huge question in my mind, what does Voltaire propose?

In A Moment Of Suffering…

One of the main topics I have recurrently seen in my readings is how bad events can completely transform an individual and their life. I have noticed a pattern in the ideas of Vonnegut, Epictetus and Voltaire pertaining to the concept of predestination, the way by which they understand and accept the horrible event of their lives. An example of this is when Candide concludes “that all is for the best in this world of ours” (27). We can see how Voltaire accepts the events that happen in a human being as meant to be. This takes some guilt off any decisions an individual has made, making it an easier to be in an appreciative and more open state of mind towards life. This is another topic we have been hearing a lot about in class, the way by which our decision opportunities become a burden after we have decided what to do. This looking back into the past is what is described all over Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, the immortality of events and the way by which you can see your life as a positive whole due to its composition of a substantial quantity of good events compared to the not so good ones.

We are told through the words of Pangloss that “the same causes produce the same effects” (34). We are shown the example of a natural disaster that affects two cities thousands of kilometers apart, Lisbon and Lima. This gives us the possibility to understand that fate is indifferent to language, religion, social status or political tendencies, it is a factor that affects us all. It is this same cause, the necessity of events happening for the better that will always give the result of change, for good or bad. This is an interesting idea Voltaire exposes as the reader can get the whole picture, the idea of having an entity of life factor that determines the course of our life without distinction.

Accepting the path we are destined to take isn’t an easy thing. Voltaire shows another part of this philosophy as he states that “private misfortunes contribute to the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are the more we find that all is well” (31). This plays with the human tendency to compare the actions and events that happen in each individual with the other. By being able to have other misfortunes worse than ours and by having the possibility of being able to compare our own to theirs, and yet know that it was all fated, we are free of the responsibility of carrying all misfortune on our shoulders. It is a mental liberation that seems to be theoretically effective, but are we truly able to surrender all our thoughts of having the opportunity to be better every day? Can we live without hoping and possibly creating a better destiny for ourselves, others and our planet?

Candide: The Optimistic Fate

Voltaire begins his novel through a description of his main character Candide, who “combined sound judgment with unaffected simplicity” (19). The narrator slowly contextualizes the relationship between young Candide and the wise tutor, Pangloss. We are immediately immersed in the philosophy of optimistic fate where “there is no effect without a cause” (20). It makes it seem like the whole book will be about the pursuit of happiness through the acceptance of the events that gradually make our characters. We are shown how great young Candide is and how his house and family are of vital importance in his life.

Pangloss describes that everything in life “was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose” (20). The language and sentence composition Voltaire uses for this character is very useful since the reader knows exactly what he is talking about. As I read the first chapter I found it very interesting to compare it to the previous book I read, the Handbook of Epictetus. Epictetus chooses the voice of a narrator to expose his message of predestination and limits his message through the example he gives. On the other hand Voltaire uses one of his characters to expose his message, this shows one of the main differences between both pieces, Voltaire contextualizes messages in a story, Epictetus states his principles.

The optimism we can observe is directed to the absolute necessity of having a positive attitude towards what our destiny has slowly uncovered. Pangloss says “that those who maintain that all is right talk nonsense; they ought to say that all is for the best” (20). Voltaire attacks the effect that sad and horrible events that happen in a human’s life by showing that things may not be all right but that they have to happen for the general best. This is a different approach from Epictetus’ who shows that the good and bad events we can’t control are necessary for the well-being of the human kind, the master play. Will Voltaire continue giving us messages through the teachings of Pangloss and their effects on Candide or will he completely change the objective of his piece?

Identifying Identity

As the reader continues the Handbook of Epictetus, he is immersed in a world of imperative statements. Epictetus has a strong voice, that makes each individual believe that he has a task in each aspect of his life for the good of the group. Epictetus’ universe is perfectly planned so that every action and sacrifice will build up the world’s history perfectly. He states that just “as a target is not set up to be missed, in the same way nothing bad by nature happens in the world” (27). This thought of connecting the daily events and problems with the destiny of the world explains a lot of Epictetus’ theory. He explains to his followers why it isn’t important to be tremendously affected by the bad moments of life, he truly gives hope by exposing that these events have to happen, they don’t depend on our decisions and actions.

This differentiation between the aspects of life that are our responsibility and those that are not, is a crucial concept in order to understand Epictetus’ teachings as I have tried to show in my previous posts (Death Is Destiny and Limiting Death). Epictetus describes that we can learn “the will of nature from the things in which we do not differ from each other” (26). This further explains how to not be moved by the ups and downs of life by maintaining a constant awareness of the importance our life has for the universe. By accepting that life, death, loss and fortune are events each individual has to live, we are assured it is something that characterizes nature, and is not up to us to decide, influence or contradict.

The point of view Epictetus shows through his work, also considers human nature to be different in a unique way for each human being. He talks about how “different people are naturally suited for different things” (29). This shows how human differences are tied with personality characteristics instead of needs and states. These different traits are determining factors in the role each human being will play and their effect on the greater picture, the connection between the actions of all the actors to the main play. Epictetus slowly turns the lights on, this helps the reader get accustomed to the different light that he is giving the world of our minds, the world of our identity and existence.

Dear Robert Frost,

I have been reading part of your work which I found very interesting and extravagant. The poem that most caught my attention was The Road Not Taken, which narrated the story of a person who tries to choose which path to take. I like how you are able to use the language in such an elaborate way, but I think you truly missed the idea of choice-making. In my handbook, the Handbook of Epictetus, you will be able to learn how to live and how decision-making isn’t up to each individual. In the first section you will read that some “things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions – in short, our own doing” (1). You will learn what death and fate really are, as you clearly lack this knowledge.

It is of vital importance that you truly learn the importance of not being the creator or playwright of your story as I clearly share in the handbook. You only are “an actor in a play, which is as the playwright wants it to be” (16). If he wants to make you a soldier, he will make you a soldier, if he wants you to be poor or rich, he will be able to play with your fortune and so on. There is an obligation, as we become influential writers to not use our literature to convince people of wrongful ideas, there is a supreme necessity to let people now what they are really supposed to do and guide them through the process.

When you say, “I-- / I took the one less traveled by” do you really mean that he took the decision to send me by the one less traveled by? These are the problems that proofreading picks up, you truly need to practice that some more. I like what I see overall, even though I don’t understand what the final goal of your writing is. Are you trying to trick human beings into believing they have more power than they really do? You should check if your language is appropriate for a substantial portion of people as my handbook is able to do, and if your words carry line by line, the true message you want them to have. I would appreciate your contacting me at your earliest convenience after reading the accompanying information.

Sincerely,
Epictetus

Limiting Death

How can death be an advisor, a force that lets us know what to do? In the Handbook of Epictetus, we are shown a different approach to death, not as the final step to life but as a daily coach that helps us get an exceptional perception about life’s priorities. Epictetus believes that you have to let “death and exile and everything that is terrible appear before your eyes every day, especially death; and you will never have anything contemptible in your thoughts or crave anything excessively” (21). By understanding how fragile and impermanent everything in our universe is, a soul who is truly aware of death will try to make as little earthly attachments as possible. This soul would stop wondering what the future will bring, since it understands and accepts that death is all there finally is. The constant decay and end of all things in order to bring to birth the next fresh cycle. Epictetus connects death with the understanding of what is and what isn’t up to you, in a discrete fashion. By explaining how fate brings and takes characters, plots and scenarios from your specific play, you begin to accept and understand what is really up to you to decide and act upon.

Expectations transform us, they force our minds to be impatient, to be silenced by that which we are waiting for. A similar thing happens with demands, we are so focused on what we want to happen that we will cross every barrier to get it. Epictetus believes that “you cannot demand an equal share if you did not do the same things, with a view of getting things that are not up to us” (25). This statement helps Epictetus show and back up his main idea, how important it is to let things go, to understand how to let life take its natural course, without human intervention. Sometimes the things which we least put our efforts into are the ones that come out better. Our hopes, expectations and demands mold our momentary being and can change our lives and characters into impatient and unhappy souls. Epictetus is showing his brainwork on disappointed souls and the steps by which a human being could stop lamenting any event in his life.

By having knowledge of the inherent death and impermanence in every object and event in life, your expectations and demands diminish immediately. As you don’t demand anything that you haven’t worked for, you are never disappointed. It seems to me that Epictetus is building a Buddhist formula for a perfect, realized human being. A true handbook for life which protects its followers from ever being affected through simple principles that point out the purpose and function of each living being. Is there a true way to never be hurt by life’s events, wouldn’t this lead to being purposeless and without affect or passion?

Acting With Patience

In the second ten sections of the Handbook of Epictetus, we are shown how to confront destiny in a patient fashion, not showing necessity through our actions. According to Epictetus, you should “not stretch your desire toward it, but wait until it comes to you” (15). He compares destiny to your behavior in a banquet, where you wait until they offer you something to eat, you don’t stretch your body to get food. There is an obligation to wait and not to act, a predestination requisite, to understand that the universe’s energy will flow and eventually reach you with its intended and unique might. Through his descriptions on how to act, the reader is assured that there is a partial free will, the decision making of a soul’s opinions and desires. These are the two complementary pieces to the Handbook of Epictetus, as I mentioned in my previous post Death Is Destiny.

The handbook shows that a person depends too much on his/her judgments or beliefs in order to act. It concludes that it is a human necessity to do so as it states that when someone “irritates you be aware that what irritates you is your own belief” (16). We are often told that there is always something positive in everything and everybody. Epictetus has another way to narrate another take on this belief, by pointing out the tendency of most people to find mostly mistakes in others and place more emphasis on these.
This may imply that there needs to be awareness training for humans, to learn to use their minds consciously towards uplifting thoughts than wasting their energy on promoting and empowering the draining negative.

Epictetus continues his narration on predestination, in which you are “an actor in a play, which is as the playwright wants it to be” (16). There is an obligation to concentrate in playing your part the best way you can, changing the human’s mentality from worrying about death and events he can’t change into accepting and confronting the variety of obstacles that will come in his way and making intelligent choices. There is a tendency in Epictetus’ words to guide a lost soul back into what he considers a good path, by showing the things he can’t do in order to change what he can. What seems to be destiny in Epictetus’ writing are the set obstacles that come instead of the specific decisions and paths the living soul may take. This “playwright” isn’t described or given the appropriate importance it should have for the handbook. Will Epictetus include in his piece that religion and the belief in god/the divine playwright are necessary to a more complete understanding this sacred game of life?

Death Is Destiny

As the reader begins the Handbook of Epictetus he is immersed in a world of knowledge which changes his perception about human destiny and anger. In the first section, Epictetus classifies life factors into those that are out of human control like disease, death and reputation, and those that can be controlled through a person’s actions like opinions and aversions. According to Epictetus, you will be miserable and lost if you “think that things naturally enslaved are free or that things not your own are your own” (11). This means that you have be able to know which things you can control and which things you can’t, a similar statement to that of the serenity prayer we repeatedly found in Slaughterhouse Five. The acceptance of this conclusion will lead a human being into a world of limits, by which he will be self-guided to understanding his life as dependant on the events that happen in his life, his perception of them, and roads taken on his arduous quest of his own unique and personal destiny.

The ideas, conclusions and life models you favor and those you are against, of are will determine who you are and what you’ll do. You also have to be able to determine which of these you can control and which life factors such as death can help you be wiser on how you choose to spend your time on the planet. In order to create a path in the right direction, you have to “detach your aversion from everything not up to us, and transfer it to what is against nature among the things that are up to us” (12). In order to accept death as your ineludible last step in the life cycle, you have to take it off the list of things you are against and help “death” keep your decisions in perspective. Death not as the destructor of life but as the final teaching ingredient of life.

In the Handbook of Epictetus, you are also confronted with the deceit of human judgment. As you begin to open your soul to the new input on death as part of life, Epictetus bombards you by saying, “death is nothing dreadful […] but instead the judgment about death that it is dreadful” (13). We have arrived at what I thought was Epictetus’ main point, humans build up opinions on judgments of opinions, on and on endlessly over time and in the end, they mistakenly accept these misleading conclusions as the truth. They become facts that become the basis of a human life’s, the race to escape death and suffering, but in the end if you are not able to accept death and suffering, you will not have fully lived.

Serenity Prayer In Tralfamadore

Thesis Statement:
The serenity prayer and the Tralfamadorian teachings are complementary to understanding Kurt Vonnegut’s philosophy on war given to us through Billy Pilgrim’s quest.

Sections for close reading:
-“Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones-to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. ” (Vonnegut, Pg. 69)
-“Billy Pilgrim says now that this really is the way he is going to die, too. As a time- traveler, he has seen his own death many times, has described it to a tape recorder.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 50)
-“I've visited thirty-one inhabited plants in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 31)
-“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present and the future.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 22)

Ending The Endless

Not being able to fully appreciate what life has given you, the sweet and the sour, and at the same time appreciate and fully attend what is happening in the present moment, is the repetitive fault of every human life. As I write this entry I’m waiting for my mother to arrive in a couple of minutes with my delicious dinner, from my favorite Italian restaurant. As I think of this event, I realize that in a couple of hours, after I’ve finished my food, I will not even remember how anxious and impatient I once was for my dinner. Being in this extreme futuristic state of mind is usually unhealthy. Living in the future is not a good idea to enjoy a truly happy state of mind. This is what Kurt Vonnegut shows us in the last two chapters of his novel, Slaughterhouse Five. As the narrator reflects on the conclusions an extra-terrestrial community has come up with, his mind races to know how truthfully happy he has been and if he could be able to live with the eternal repetition of his life’s good moments. “If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still- if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 74) This is a different kind of eternity than the one we can extract from Gilgamesh, which narrates the eternity of one’s actions. Here we can see an eternity of the mind, a process by which you are able to control your present actions by the thought of having to live those events forever.

Being conscious of how the present becomes your past in a second by second basis, you target your life to be the most passionate and richly wonderful possible, so you become the most fulfilled and wise human being you can be. As Billy realizes the state of the horses which are transporting some of the American prisoners of war through the destructed Dresden, we are able to approach Vonnegut’s mind in an understanding manner. “When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn't cried about anything else in the war.” (Vonnegut, Pg. 70) It is truly difficult to accept something like this, when you just lived a massacre of the dimensions of Dresden, you can’t understand how a human being only cares for some horses. There is more empathy for the animals than for the humans. This may be a defense mechanism to protect himself from the human horror. This brings me to my next conclusion about Billy, he isn’t completely cognizant of what he has lived and is too concerned with living in the never-ending repetition of events to be accepting of his present. Billy doesn’t notice anything, he is just there to live it. There is no other way to understand war in a positive attitude than to accept it as something that we just had to live, a terrible fate of sorts.

Allowing oneself to explore the limits of our minds, and the capabilities of our soul to appreciate what we are living and all of the positive events that make us up is one of the crucial pieces to be in a relaxed and accepting state of mind. There is always a necessary step to not take things too personally, it isn’t that the universe is against an individual being, but that there is a strong tendency to take our spirit into a quest to find ourselves and ultimately be able to live in a moment by moment basis, as the following maxim describes. “Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones-to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. ” (Vonnegut, Pg. 69) Fate is a strong character at the end of this novel. Fate is the messenger which lets us know that it is our task, and our task only, to try to live in the greatest state of mind we can possibly obtain with effort, discipline and acute awareness, ultimately finding a balance between our sealed past, our live present and our ripening future.