Best of Week: Seeing in "Cathedral"

This week in class we read a short story called Cathedral that had a bit of irony running through it. This irony was that the blind man in the story could see more than the man with vision. Of course the sighted man could literally see more than the blind man in the physical sense, but the blind mad had a better idea of what was going on in the world. He was better at understanding people and their emotions, and could grasp concepts that the sighted man had never even thought about. I think that this is because the blind man could not be fooled by acts that people sometimes try to put on in order to hide their emotions, such as smiling even though they are really hurting on the inside. In Cathedral, the blind man actually teaches the sighted man to look at things in a way that he didn't know he was capable of. That is also ironic, a blind man teaching a sighted man how to see. I can use this lesson from Cathedral in my everyday life by thinking things through more thoroughly and not only trusting my sense of sight to see things for me. I have to dig deeper and look beyond the physical nature of things to really understand them.

What If: We Don't Really Live in the "Real World"

When watching The Matrix and reading Heart of Darkness, a common theme we discussed in class was the concept of a system and a real world. In The Matrix, Morpheus showed Neo that the "world" he thought he had been living in his entire life was just a system within the "real world." Now, this concept may be a little difficult to grasp at first, but is actually possible. We could all be living in a system like Neo thought he was, but really we are all just images and our physical bodies are somewhere on a fetus farm. If this was true, would anybody be able to prove it? Can anybody prove it isn't? Maybe this exact scenario isn't occurring, but perhaps something similar is happening and none of us are aware of it. It seems a little crazy, but I can't help but wonder if something like this is actually going on in the world. Will I ever know for sure? Probably not. But it never hurts to ask the question, "What if?"

Connection: Heart of Darkness and Santa Clause

In the end of The Heart of Darkness, Marlow goes to visit Kurtz's intended. The intended is still heavily grieving over the death of Kurtz and believes that all he wanted on his death bed was to be with the one who understood him most, herself. Marlow recognizes the amount of pain that she is in and knows that telling her about Kurtz's alternate life would crush her. Instead of revealing the truth, he decides to tell her that Kurtz's last words were her name. This situation reminds me of how parents tell their children that Santa exists. They believe that by telling their children this lie, that it will bring them a sense of joy that the truth could not. Now, I'm not saying that there is a dark side to Christmas without believing in Santa. I just believe that there is a similarity in the thought process between Marlow and parents that tell their children about Santa. They both are lying to people in an attempt to bring them happiness because they don't think the truth will bring them the same amount of joy. I know that lying is never the right thing to do, but sometimes it is tempting in order to lie to people because you think it will be better for them in the long run. If I was in the same situation as Marlow, I might have done the same thing; and when I'm a parent one day, I will tell my children about Santa.