fahrenheit 451

Yesterday in class we discussed an article called “The Elusive Big Idea” by Neal Gabler. Gabler argued that we are currently in a time where facts are all that matters, not the ideas behind them. I believe this to be true, that a majority of Americans care more about the color of their shirt than what the meaning of life is. Thinking big ideas is too much work for the newer, lazier generation. This reminded me of “Fahrenheit 451.” I read this book for the first time last summer, and after finishing it all I could think was that Ray Bradbury predicted the future. I can see traits in my younger sister that resemble those of the characters in Bradbury’s novel. All they care about is getting the next thing that’s on the market. Books are banned because they are dangerous, they spark ideas. These ideas could make us aware of the faults in the system and that is unacceptable in the fictional governments’ eyes. Now, without governmental intervention, books are being neglected by many and instead replaced with new gadgets that allow for gaming and instant communication. And even there we are numbing ourselves to new technology because we expect the next new thing to be released in a year or so.

So how do we fix this phenomena? I’m not sure we can. Many people are too stubborn to have to use their brains and think. If only we had a system that taught children, early on, that reading opens up new worlds. Right now, at least in my sister’s eyes, reading has been stigmatized to mean nerd or anti-social. If we can get rid of this stigma, we’d have a better educated nation. We’d also have a nation that knows how to think of these big ideas.

‘Gender-Bender’ Manga

Reading Simone de Beauvoir’s text and discussing it, reminded me of a manga genre I read when I was in high school. The genre is called “gender bender.” Gender bender storylines revolve around a character’s choice to disguise themselves as a person of the other gender. Most of the plots I’ve read in this genre are about girls who for some reason relevant to the story act like men. Typically it is not as if they want to be the opposite gender, or that they go as far as getting a sex change, it’s just that they are in a situation where acting the other gender is necessary.

For example the Manga on the right, “Ouran Highschool Host Club,” has a main character who is a girl who presents herself as a male so that she can get into the school she wants, Ouran Highschool. This Highschool is a prestigious one and only allow so many males and females in, and since all the female slots had filled, she applied as a boy and was accepted. So the story revolves around a group of boys who end up finding out her true identity.

Remembering this genre had me thinking about why women would disguise themselves as men. After reading de Beauvoir’s piece it dawned on me that there are more privileges to being male than I had previously realized. I now have more of a desire to learn more about feminism and its goals.

Night

While reading Hannah Ardendt’s article on Totalitarianism for Honors 203, I was also reading Elie Wiesel’s “Night” for my history course. Reading them at the same time allowed for me to draw parallels much more easily. Elie Wiesel’s novel is his first-hand account of life in the concentration camps. His accounts of starvation and death verified Ardendt’s view of Totalitarianism. In her article she states that for the Nazis to be able to completely be able to control the Jews they had to strip them of their humanity. “Night” tells of this loss humanity. At times Wiesel speaks of only wanting the next food rationing because that is all their lives have come to.

My main note to leave here is that reading the two texts together left a more lasting impression than I believe they would have separately.