Friends: The Need for Peers
Author's Note: This is my response for part two, chapter 3. I am still, as I will always, trying to focus on a narrow topic, and I am trying to tie in the story with my writing.
"A friend is one who walks in when others walk out." This quote by Walter Winchill sums up the importance of friendship and what it means to be a good friend. A good friend is one who walks in when you need help. A great friend stays there when the trouble keeps piling up.
In the book, the whiskey priest becomes friends with some of the prison people. They swear to protect him if he gets revealed to the Red Shirts. He especially befriends a woman, who is so close to him that she follows him everywhere.
The Mestizo, on the other hand, is not a friend to the priest, nor anybody, and he thinks only for himself. He is portrayed as an animal, because he only thinks about one thing, survival. He will do anything to capture the whiskey priest on his own, so he can get the reward and prosper, although the whiskey priest has done a good job of avoiding him.
Friends are what keep us together, mentally and socially. Without them, we wouldn't have anything to look forward to in life, because who likes to do everything alone? Everybody needs a friend, and friends are important, no matter what anybody else says.
Fear: What We Don't Know
Author's Note: This in response to part 2, chapter 2. I am trying to still write about a narrow topic, and to have good transitions.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I think that Franklin D. Roosevelt is right in this quote. Fear is something that can consume our lives, but if you look at things correctly, they aren't always that scary. For example, as a kid, nearly everybody is afraid of the dark, scared of what could be lurking in the dark corners, but when they get older, they usually get over it. Fear is usually represented by darkness, because people associate blackness and dark with fear, because hasn't everybody at one point in their life feared that? The whiskey priest was scared when he realized that he was practically a prisoner to the Mestizo, and that the half-caste wanted to turn him in.
Likewise, people sometimes treat fear like it's a plague, that it should be avoided. The whiskey priest overcame his fear and got away from the Mestizo, but he still had a nagging fear, because he knew that the Mestizo would hunt him down. I think that fear doesn't always mean being scared of something, so actually, FDR's quote is only half right. Sometimes, to fear something means that you respect it so much, you are almost scared of it. The fact the fearing something can mean having respect can change lots of people lives. If we fear our parents, teachers, and other elders, we can have a much more respectable society.
The Big Questions About Pride: What do They Mean?
Author's Note: This is in response to part 2, chapter 1. I am trying to continue to focus on a narrow topic. 1/28
Why do people feel pride? This question can be answered simply, or in depth. The answer depends on the level of somebody's pride. The more prideful they are of themselves, the more they will have to say about it, because they will have the best understanding of it. A person who's been through what it's like to have pride, and the effects on you and others will likely be able to give better insight about pride and what it means.
Another big question to answer is "Is pride good or bad?". If you look at yourself highly, is that good because then you will have good self esteem, or is it bad because your expectations will be too high so that when you fail, you will be too dissapointed in yourself. The whiskey priest feels absolutely no pride because he feels that he has done many things wrong, and that he wants to make correct decisions in the future.
This question can come circle to talking about how you view life, and whether or not it is good to view life through a positive or negative lens on life. I believe that the best way is to settle in the middle. Look through the positive lens when the going gets tough, but to also look through a negative lens when things seem too good, to evaluate the situation for anything fraudulent, and to not raise your expectations to an unreachable level. The whiskey priest views life in both too, except he takes things a little more negatively than positively, because he needs to keep lowly so the government doesn't find him, but he thinks that he is a bad person that doesn't make enough right choices, which is very wrong. What is right and wrong when it comes to pride, too much or too little? The only correct answer comes from two places, our minds and our hearts.
Conviction: The Truth About Decisions
Author's Note: This is my response to chapter 4. I am trying to use better conventions and focus on a narrower topic. 1/24
"Conflict builds character. Crisis defines it." This quote by Steven V. Thulon defines crisis and character all in six words. When you are in a moment crisis, your character is revealed, but that's not all. When faced with a true crisis, your conviction is revealed too. Crises are the hand that pushes the door open to your true convictions because you don't have time to think about it and go with the status quo. The best people rise above conflict and use their conviction to back themselves up. If somebody makes a questionable decision, your conviction can help clear the messy water.
Martyrs are the perfect examples of people who wholly believed in their conviction. They went out of their way to show the world what they believe in and why. The lieutenant completely believes that religion is wrong, so he goes out of his way to make certain that all of the priests are killed. He even reaches a point where he decides that finding and killing the whiskey priest is far more important than capturing a criminal, even one that's committed murder. He is the best example in the book of someone who wholly believes in a conviction.
Unlike the lieutenant, the whiskey priest is constantly battling himself about what to do and why to do it. His conviction is in the church, but sometimes he thinks about straying from that because of all the pain, worry, and struggle that it brought him. Although it appears that, because he is battling with himself, he is not that good, and that he doesn't have a strong conviction, but the decisions he makes starkly conflict with that. He always goes with what is right in the church, even though he sometimes comes close to doing the wrong things, and he never goes against his conviction. Conviction can sometimes be battled, but true conviction comes in only the crises that life throws at us.
Author's Note: I am reading The Power and the Glory, PAG, with a group, and every other day, I will post a response. Today is my response from the first three chapters. 1/21
The author's main message is that everybody has to have a conviction. A conviction is a firmly held belief or opinion, which means that it's an opinion that you have and that you believe in wholy. If you have any doubt in your mind about a conviction, it's not one. The book is in 1940's Mexico, when religion has been outlawed. The whiskey priest is trying to win a tug-and-war battle with himself about his conviction. Along the way the author introduces various characters with very different convictions. Convictions are very important. If nobody had one, everybody would stumble around confused, because they wouldn't be sure of what to think of everything.
There isn't something necessarily wrong with a single paragraph answer, but it would need to be a precise, well constructed paragraph. This one drifts, taking a new direction in the middle. It is also quite informal. A response should have a more formal voice. If you would like to go over this together, it would be my pleasure.
ReplyDeleteThis is a response to your second entry. You succeeded in your goal in writing a piece that narrows a focus to something more specific. Using the lieutenant and the whiskey priest as text evidence to prove a point was well done. I applaud you for your massive improvement.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the second piece, I would first begin by saying the improvement from the first is dramatic. Thanks to some hard work between the two of us, this is really a great leap in ability. I would also say that the use of a title is currently not being taken advantage of. Meanwhile, the text begins with a strong introduction providing clarity and attitude over the topic. Then you transition well to the novel, using examples of text evidence. Finally, your third paragraph is a great close to the piece. Excellent job overall. You went from, say, a 55% to 90%!
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you say about the whiskey priest. We all have kind of look at the whiskey priest as a little bit of a failure, but he makes the right decisions in the end.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the one on fear: I like how you wrote this piece, assembling a clear couple of paragraphs. At the same time, I am bothered by the idea of having a better society if we fear authority. People are capable of much higher aspirations if they are motivated by things greater than fear. Fear is a motivator for us at the animal level. Fear is not a high level motivator,. For example, I may be motivated by love, or knowledge, or belief, or principle. All of these things exist best outside a state of fear. Fear is a diminishing motive. In fact, the singular piece of advice that occurs most often in the Bible is the advice to not be afraid. I do not see fear as a positive motivator.
ReplyDelete