Journal 77: Pressure from Parents

Parents certainly have a lot of pressure and influence on the development and growth of a person. In Rose for Emily, the influence of the father on Emily is massive. First of all, the father is an aristocrat, therefore, Emily is also an aristocrat. Because of this title and status, Emily are looked with respect just because of her last name. This contributes to her character of being spoiled and which developed into a disregard to laws and rules and carefree personality. Emily also has pressure to keep up his title and status so she could not choose some Yankees from the north or he would be frowned upon. Her father also fend off suitors and that contributed to her desperate personality. Combining with her spoiled personality, he will want desperately want she wants and she could not understand if she could not get it or she would not allow the fact that she cannot get what is wants. This results to her killing Homer after Homer tells her that he is not going to be with her. She wants Homer desperately, when she can't have him, she kills him and sleeps beside him to have the illusion of having him around all the time and that he didn't reject her in the first place.

Journal 76: White Lie

White lie is essential in almost all circumstances. Whatever the nature of the situation, the condition, or the parties involved, white lie is almost always a must some time or another, just sooner or later. White lie is useful in many different purpose. Some white lies are used to avoid social awkwardness and to avoid sticky, difficult, or uncomfortable situations where further arguing would lead to trouble or if the truth would lead to enragement of another party or the truth is insignificant but is something bad. Other times, lies are used to conceal the truth because truth hurts. Has it ever occur to you that someone asked you a question that is supposed to be a esteem boost for them but the truth is actually counterintuitive because the truth is what the person doesn't want to hear. However, you would lie to them in their face because you know that he needs the lie and he knows that he wants the lie. Another kind of white lie is you don't want someone to worry too much. It's out of good heart, like all white lies are. For example, you're going to your girlfriend's house to study and maybe fool around a little. You know nothing's going to happen but you don't want your parents to get nosy or even forbid you to go so you lie that you're going to your friend's house.

Journal 75: Shadow of the Past

Emily in the story, A Rose for Emily, has its characteristics, life, actions greatly influenced by the events of the past. The events of the past influenced her by tormenting her with the presence of his fathers, her cousins, her family histories and the actions of the people before her of the Southern United States of America. Emily's character is most greatly affected by her family in that she looks down on people because she is a wealthy aristocrat. Also, people look up to her and let her pass inconvenience because of her high society status that makes her dependent and spoiled. Her father played a role on her action of not marrying because he refused and scares off all suitors of Emily because he doesn't feel like they're good enough for her and therefore Emily becomes unmarried til a very late age. The cousins of her have the same effects; They scared of Homer Baron. However, scaring off Baron wasn't just because of social class difference but also because of the cultural influence that made the Southerners look down on the northerners that came to the South looking for profit. They call them carpetbaggers and they don't like them. That is why Homer left and from this, Emily gone rage and killed him.

Journal 74: Poetry’s Social Function

Poetry in society can have different form. There are the sonnet and the haiku and the ballad. Different types of poetry takes on different forms and the different forms of poetry serves different purposes in society. For example, the Haiku developed y the Japanese served a purpose to express the feelings but also alongside physical observation. Observation and imagery is important in the haiku so it is not purely of images or purely of thoughts. Sonnets are rhythmic poems that are used in a variety of ways. Because of its acoustic appeals, it can be used in speeches or monologues but it can also be writing that appeals and persuade people. Sonnets can also be used to express thoughts and ideas and are too fancy to be explained or expressed through words. The ballads are the really long and story like poems. They are basically stories, whether short or long, sometimes can be extremely long that is almost like a 800 pages novel, but some can be a novel with just a few chapters. They serve to tell a story, usually of a hero's adventure to save the princess or defeat the monster, but a hero's journey nonetheless. Poetry in different forms serve different purposes and all are important.

Journal 73: No Ideas But In Things

Ideas in things have a certain quality of being infinitive and unique because ideas are thoughts that does not have to be in a practical form where things are materialistic of the formation of the ideas so in order to conform to the laws of physics the idea must be practical in order for it to take on a physical form. In poems and literatures, the fascinating things about them is that they are expressions of ideas in the materialistic physical world but it can still the the ideals of the ideas that have no specific practical ideas that conform to the laws of physics to exist in this world. The amazing idea of ideas needing to be expressed in a form of imagery, as the imagists proposed is that it completely destroys the whole purpose of creating ideas from literature. Literature are supposed to be the materialization of ideas that cannot take real action or form in the world but with literature is brought into life. Then the imagists came along and changed it into purely imagery and defeats the purpose of writing. We must change this form of writing back into the transcendentalists and surrealism and magical writing because that is the true purpose of writing.

Journal 72: War and Economics

Economic disaster can be caused by war or it can be fixed by war. War is a very peculiar thing, makes some people poor as dirt and some people filthy rich. One example is the armsdealer. The armsdealer profit a lot during wars and especially the armsdealer that sell weapons to both side. Although unethical, they profit a lot during wars by selling to both side. Another party that gains a lot of profit from war is the winner. They make treaty that kills the loser's economy and military and in turns gets millions and billions of dollars from the treaty. However, as homewrecking and hellish wars might be, wars can save the economy during a recession and depression. What happens during a recession or depression is that people don't want to buy products and so production dies down and therefore workers are laid off. What happens during war is that government is forced to buy weapons, steel, tanks, and people are put to work for the war effort, therefore driving the economy back to working and growing. Although people die, economy will be brought back up because increase in government spending increasing aggregate demand will increase real GDP and therefore lowering unemployment.

Journal 71: Historical Influences

The modernists came about after the realist and it's a whole new movement that revolutionized art and literature. When we talk about modern art, there are a lot of different kind because there aren't exactly a single sentence that can summarize the modern art. It is simply too broad and too much of a grasp for something to be able to characterize it sincerely. One statement people say about modern art is, "I can do it, but I didn't". This statement is basically saying that modern arts are a new perspective in seeing something. Seeing what people can't see. It's not about honing and mastering artistic skills such as being able to draw paintings that looks like photos from a digital camera. It is about seeing ordinary things in everyday life and inventing a creative look for the ordinary thing or idea or showing others how to view it in an innovative perspective. It is basically a poetic representation of what we see everyday, but modify to the extreme and creative and new, it is what we call modern art. Not anyone with great art skills can create modern arts, only those with a strong imagination and a keen observation can create modern art and each one is unique.

Journal 70: Social Influences – Entertainment

We can see from the internet and from oral histories of those that are older than our generation that the good old days without technological control of our mind have been long lost. From that, we infer that they live i na world where there are radio, tv but they aren't that widespread and they resort to other activities. Classic teenagers these days are the teenagers that sit in front of a computer and plays computer all day. It might not be represented of all of us but it can be equivalent to the people that played tic tac toe or chess with themselves in the old days. Computer games are so popular now not just because they're more widespread and more fun, it's because there is a whole new and wider social network in the gaming realm. For many gamers, they might have more friends that they shared more secrets to in the virtual reality and people across the world playing the same game at the same time than the people in his classroom because they felt more disclosed and confident when they now they cannot have an affect on their life with these secrets. Gaming has become socializing for some people and it is a problem because kids should be out in the field playing and chatting under the moonlit night sky.

Journal 69: Make It New

Art IS a joyous thing. I have to agree to that because an art that is portraying a smile, a warm family reunion, a laughter, or a feast can all be affecting our mood. We are highly sophisticated, empathic creatures, we can take on emotions of others and assume how they are feeling by their expressions or their actions. When we see a portrait of a laughing child, we don't just acknowledge that he is happy and that he is laughing. We search through our own histories and remember how the laugh and smile felt like and then we use that emotional history to assume that he's feeling the same way. Mirror neurons in our brain help us to identify other's emotion to better link with others. The reason we have these strong mirror neuron and emotional connection with other people, and also some creatures with an abundance of facial expressions, is because we are highly social creatures and these mirror neurons and the ability to help us understand and connect with other people's emotion can help us in dire situation or help us better survive or stand out in a crowd. Suppose I know our boss is angry and my colleagues that don't know about it makes a joke about his fat wife, he will be immediately fired, without income, and then eventually starved to death, while I would calm the boss down and get a promotion and have 65 babies due to my economic supremacy.

Journal 68: What’s His Problem?

Prufrock is scared of rejection because he felt like his time has passed for flirting with girls. He feels like he is old and not attractive and thus his low self-confidence is a contributing factor to his bad image as well. Sometimes, it is not about physical appearance. Physical appearance is part of it. However, confidence plays a major role in how one presents himself and how one presents himself plays a major and almost absolute role in how he is perceived. A confident average looking person might be more attracting to the opposite sex than a above average looking guy that constantly diminishes self-image and thinks poorly of himself is. Having a belief that you yourself is not worthwhile will generate the aura that spreads to other people carrying a message that tells them that you are not worthwhile. How fun is talking to a person who constantly needs assurance from people to tell them they're attractive and constantly saying bad things about themselves. It's like babysitting a depressed teenager, not very fun. It's also sometimes annoying just like how a person would be annoyed when a nerd that always gets 100 keeps on saying how bad she did on the test but always gets a 100 in the end. Very annoying and not very attractive.

Journal 67: The American Dream

The American Dream is what we would like to believe. However there's no such thing as the American Dream. There is a wildly held belief that if you're poor but you're hardworking enough, you can be rich like John Rockefeller. That might be true. Though anything is possible. You don't have to be in America to achieve that. You need luck, not some government provided opportunity. It is just an advertisement for people to go to the United States. Sure, there's stories of people going from extreme poverty to filthy rich. However, that is definitely not the norm, and that is definitely not how you should think. It happens everywhere, just not often. The reason why it's not true is because it's normal for rich people to get richer. Say the house appreciates every year. Everyone knows that there is going to be a boom in the value of houses, however, you are poor, you don't got no money to invest on houses while the rich people, who accidentally found out about the house value appreciation by random chance, decide to spend 1/50 of his asset in gaining two times the amount of money invested. This demonstrate no matter how smart you are or how hardworking you are, if you don't have the money to invest, you just can't prosper, only by chance.

Journal 66: Better Things?

A change might be good or it might be bad. The change from hunting to have surplus to developing cities,  industrialization, urbanization, are being argued both ways for being either good or bad. We really don't know what's a good change and whether advancement in technology sense is really for the best. True, our technology is getting more and more efficient. Efficient in doing what? Efficient in cutting down trees and  destroying our environment for a easier and more convenient life. Some people argue that urbanization is defiance of God and nature and we shouldn't exploit our homes like this. It's a shame that we are cutting down trees, digging into the ground for minerals and oil, and polluting our environment, but isn't that what we want. Even the activists that are against urbanization, technological advancement, probably live in a nice house, owns a car, uses public transportation or taxi, and has a smart phone or a laptop or both. I believe that urbanization is for the better because the world becomes more convenient, people's life become better at the cost of environmental damage. As a kid brought up alongside technology and convenience, I wouldn't just want to live at a place filled with green grass and trees because nature sometimes can be disastrous and very hot like an oven.