Third Quarter Reflection Blog

     Something I've accomplished this quarter that I'm proud of is my butterfly. It took a fair few hours to make, and has a bit of a story behind it (not related to the material it's based off of). To prevent this blog post being absurdly long, I'll just give you the highlight reel:

• My sister accidentally decapitated one of the prisoners
• The platform they're standing on is rigged through the inside of the tower
• We repeatedly messed up with the paint
• The project is 95% supported by tacky glue

      Despite these internal issues, crafting catastrophes, and production problems, it turned out awesome. Due to my complete and utter lack of artistic talent, I was quite surprised by this. The project's Thinglink tags also worked well, despite the random coding error. Overall, it was perfect, and I wouldn't change a thing if I could.

      The most challenging part of 3rd quarter was staying on top of the Holocaust research tasks and other larger assignments with no set due date. The reason for this was that there were gaps between the assignment of new tasks, and getting ahead didn't make much sense either, as we were already dealing with Night more frequently than the tasks. I overcame this by simply asking when exactly they were due, and worked around that as I usually do. I did eventually manage to get those done, but it was kind of annoying. Regardless of that, I'm good now.
      The area I've made my biggest improvements in would have to be...hmm...I don't really know. I've gained more knowledge, but that's general. I've done more work, but that just gave me more experience. It appears that I've plateaued, which is fine. Sometimes you don't make noticeable improvements, you just stay where you are. If you're on top of things, that's fine, and it certainly appears I've remained atop things. That's really all I have to say on the subject.
Have a great spring break, everyone!

[I keep trying to put an image, but since it never works, I'm going to stop trying.]

Life is Beautiful Blog (WARNING MASSIVE SPOILERS)

WARNING: MASSIVE MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

      There are many connections between Life is Beautiful and Night. Both feature a father who saves his son and vice versa. The father does get killed shortly before the liberation of the camp (which is why I put the spoiler warning at the top). Elie doesn't have to hide himself, as Joshua did, but he did have to hide his age. Both feature towns who basically ignore the encroaching jaws of fascism until they're consumed by it, and each pair has a similar coping setup that involves one member doing something unusual and the other relying on the first for support (Elie's loss of faith and his father relies upon him, whereas in the movie Guido's gamifying the camp and relying on Joshua for support). The methods of the fascists are never truly explained, merely being a shadowy force in the background to cause the story's progression.

       Despite the many similarities between the two works, there are differences between them as well.  For one, the protagonist being Jewish is not outright said in Life is Beautiful, unlike in Night where it is mentioned basically on the first page of the book. For another, Guido's demise comes out of left field, whereas Elie's father's demise is foreseen, as it kind of uses that dread to recreate an atmosphere of the doom to come. Another difference is that Life is Beautiful takes place in the heyday of Italian fascists as opposed to the Nazis invading. Night also has much less slapstick than Life is Beautiful, but that is to be expected, given that it's an autobiography and the circumstances of Romania's invasion. There's also a time gap between the two works. Life is Beautiful has a gap from 1939 to 1944, then picks up around that time. Night starts in 1944 and ends in 1945. If the math is correct, the time skip ended around the same time Night began, give or take 1 month.
   
      Most of the humor in Life is Beautiful comes from Guido being happy-go-lucky. This oftentimes clashes with the fascist regime and authority figures. For example, the scene in the school where Guido masquerades as a fascist inspector and starts dancing on the table. He knows he can break the system with crazy gambits and maneuvers, so he does. This, as always, clashes with the people in control of him, especially in the camp. This humorous attitude actually causes most of the suspense in the movie as well. If one of Guido's plots hits a wrinkle (Joshua saying "Thank you" for instance), he just improvises something to save himself (like teaching all the kids to say it so that the lady watching them has no clue who actually said it or gets distracted by Guido breaking the rules). This in turn amplifies the humor and happy-go-lucky attitude he has, until he gets to the point where his luck runs out.

      One of the ways life is shown as beautiful in the film is the fact that Guido's slapstick behavior basically manages to inadvertently subvert a fascist regime, just by being himself. More specifically, it's beautiful that he manages to have a happy life full of laughter and love under a fascist regime, and fascist regimes aren't known for being rainbow happy disco party places. Guido manages to have an awesome life, mostly, and be a walking humor dispenser, as a member of a group targeted by fascists. This may be partly due to the more benevolent-ish nature of fascist Italy, and also partly due to Guido's own humorous optimistic nature. Any way you slice it, Guido's extremely lucky to have gotten that far. Another way life is shown as beautiful is in Dora and Guido's romance. It's full of cringeworthy pickup lines, cheesy declarations of love, more slapstick moments, and all-around realism. This is very similar to how most romances, at least before they gets to the stage of marriage, play out. If it were taped, the viewers would certainly view it as cringy, but the authenticity would certainly be there. And that's beautiful.

[Just pretend there is an image here. (It won't render regardless of what I do).]

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Argumentative Articles AoW Blog

      The most pressing argument, at least from what I have seen, is how to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Jackson's article debated whether nuclear power was the solution. I'm inclined to agree with the pro-nuclear side, as nuclear power has a pretty great track record of only 3 notable incidents, with only 2 of those being destructive, as opposed to coal, which had many notable incidents, and most of them were destructive. In addition, nuclear power doesn't produce carbon emissions. Carbon emissions are the main reason for climate change, and as a result, this would be more climate-friendly. It's also cheaper than coal power.  Dylan's article discussed whether or not eating less meat would help. I am not inclined to agree with the pro side here, as there are several studies that show otherwise. However, there is one thing I do agree on with them: Gaseous cow emissions* should be fixed due to the high amount of methane produced when a cow unleashes them. Methane is several hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide, which means it's more of a threat than power-related carbon output. Also, the emissions* make up 51% of our greenhouse gas production. 51% of our total  times several hundred equals a huge risk. To sum up: You don't look at the output of the creature's meat, you look at the output of its emissions.*

      This issue does affect me personally, as I live on this planet. If something's doing damage to the planet, it is everyone's job to stop and try to reverse the damage. My personal idea for a solution is to bottle cow emissions* and use them somehow, in a way that wouldn't further damage the Earth. On the argument side, I'd say that the side with the most logical evidence and/or plan wins one hundred percent of the time.
(Preemptive apologies if my image doesn't render...)

*flatulence

Night Blog: Elie's Transformation

      During the events of Night, Elie Wiesel undergoes several transformations in character. These transformations morph Elie into something far different than what he was at the beginning of the book. In a way, that seems to be the main effect of the Holocaust on all it touched: people shaken, broken, and crushed into hardly recognizable shadows of their former selves.
   
      One of the most critical transformations in Elie is the way he views his faith. At the beginning (in
Sighet), Elie's faith is such a cornerstone of his personality that it is barely thought of as a conscious thing. Elie says, "Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?" (4). He's so pious that it's both as essential and as subconscious as breathing. Whether that's nature or nurture, it's there and isn't going away...or is it? In Birkenau, when he sees children being incinerated, Elie loses his faith for what seems like all eternity. He remarks, "Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never" (34). If you see something and it makes you forsake a massive chunk of your identity, it would have driven anyone weaker completely over the edge into utter insanity. As Buna crumbles around him, his faith seems to return to his subconscious, even as he resists it. Once he figures out what Rabbi Eliahu's son did to his father, Elie remarks, "And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed. 'Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu's son has done'" (91). His faith has returned, even if he's in denial of it. And if you look past the end, you'll find that he's pious again, based on his Nobel Prize acceptance speech (he says a prayer, and believes in it, for those who didn't feel like going and reading it yourselves). Elie's faith seems to have been an inverted bell curve: he was extremely pious at the start of the book, lost it towards the middle, and picked it back up again towards the end of the book, then stayed pious for the rest of his life. 

      Another critical shift in Elie is the way he views other human beings, especially his father. At the beginning, he views his father as any normal boy would: as a background character to be defended when disparaged upon. He simply is, and that's enough. However, something shifts in Elie between Sighet and Auschwitz. When Elie's father is struck, he writes, "I stood petrified. What had happened to me?  My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh" (39). After Elie's father dies and Buchenwald is liberated, he disregards his father's memory in favor of food: "Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That's all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread" (115). He's thinking in 'survival mode,' as it were: only focusing on his survival and not his humanity, or at least not his grief. This is not a commonly necessary thing to do, as humanity is, by definition, what makes us human (like our emotions and cameraderie). When humans are forced to resort to this, serious metal changes occur. This leads to us behaving like animals, so we can survive in order to stop behaving like animals. Elie also goes through such changes; he focuses on himself, and leaves his father's memory in the dust, if only for a short period of time. The horrors of the Holocaust did that to him, as well as causing him to write the book. I will leave you with his core message: Don't let historic atrocities repeat themselves.

 [My image won't render]

Works Cited

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.

Butterfly Project

In case of tag glitch please click here.
"The Storm"
The heavens sense our burden:
the threat of future downpours
I carry on my back.
We are drunk on wine vinegar.
The nearing storm rouses me,  
it makes me want to shake the world.
               
We are an assemble of misery.
If our hands are bloody,
it is from the blood of our own wounds.
The grotesque scars
we bear on our bodies
testify to battles fought
that went unrecognized.
                 
But the next storm will unfurl our flag
and uproot the rotted trees!
Then we, together with the gusting wind,
will scale Spilberk's* heights,
and stand in victory on the peaks of cliffs,
our hair blowing freely in the wind.


*Spilberk was a famous jail in the Middle Ages in the city of Brno

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