1 Down, 1 to Go

I cannot believe this semester is over already!! And look how far everyone has come!! From Frankenstein to A Doll's House, we have covered how society affects someone, gender differences, and how external forces can affect the internal conflict. My favorites from this semester are Frankenstein, Grendel, and A Doll's House. Very different yet they all seem to have a similar idea of society affecting the internal conflict. In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the creature is rejected from society because of his appearance. Through his rejection he is feeling anger and wants to be loved. However, he at first is not a mean and nasty being--he's curious about people. The external forces that caused him pain made him the killing machine that he is in the end. In Grendel by John Gardner, Grendel starts off the same way as the creature--wanting to be loved and curious. But as soon as Hrothgar throws the ax, he knows that the world he was expecting does not exist. After the humans assume he is an awful thing, he again like the creature, turns into an awful being that the external forces influenced. Lastly, A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, it's the same idea but in the end there is no murderer. Nora is influenced by society in being that she does what her husband says and that because she is a woman she cannot do anything business like. It's hogwash. But it's how society was. The way she acts is because of the external forces such as Torvald and her dad teacher her to be the puppet while they tell her what to do. It's what we call "learned helplessness" in AP Psych. But she reverses the conditioning by breaking the cycle and leaving Torvald in the end. All three characters in the end are alone. The external factors of society have made them realize that they are not who they officially would be. Creature realizes that no one will ever love him and is alone, Grendel finds out he can be defeated which crushed his spirit BUT HE DOES NOT DIE, and Nora realizes she does not have to be the housewife that cannot do anything related to business. They all are in a way enlightened in the end--another topic that has come up over and over this semester. My favorite thing to relate our books to is Plato's Allegory with the prisoners. One prisoner makes his way out into the world and comes back and tries to tell the others what has happened. It's kind of amazing how the authors seem to have a hidden language that can they can all communicate to each other with. Maybe that's a weird way of looking at it and it's really just a format that is just really common. But I'm going to pretend I'm one of the prisoners still stuck in the cave in my own fantasy believing that all of the authors have their own language.