To End Feigning Normalcy

Every day this week, I sat in all my classes waiting and waiting for anyone to address it. Everyone knows about the tragic event of earlier this week, yet we still continue the routine schedule of school. Students are forced to bury their emotions from 7:20 AM to 2:09 PM. Why? Why must we act like everything is normal?

One of my teachers insinuated that the schoolwork we've been doing has been to distract us from our emotions. However, distractions can only do so much. They don't help when you're alone with your thoughts at night. They don't help when you realize why there's a rose on that one desk in class. Sooner or later, we'll have to come to terms with our feelings and the sooner we do, the better.

We need to discuss mental health in our schools together, not just as one person going to the counselor's office. Although the counselors have done a great deal to help their grieving students, there's a disconnect between the emotions in their office and the indifference of classrooms. We need to be allowed to bring our thoughts to our classrooms, otherwise we're doomed to appear as superficial as the characters in Gatsby. We cannot turn into someone who sees the love of his life and assumes an act of indifference, his first words to her being "we've met before".  

We need to foster discussion on mental health and ingrain it in our schooling, not as something distant that we only deal with at home. We need to realize that this is a problem of utmost importance and everything is not the same. If we don't, if we continue to keep our emotions to ourselves, if we feign normalcy, we'll become as damned as the characters in The Great Gatsby.

Mauspaganda?

To the left, we have a piece of German propaganda disturbingly titled "Don't Let Go", and to the right is Chapter Two of Maus Volume I, titled "The Honeymoon". In "Don't Let Go", the writing on the bottom translates to

"Do not grow weary, do not loosen the grip,

This poisonous serpent may not slip away.

Better that one strangles it to death

Than that our misery begin anew."

Clearly, the snake with Stars of David etched on its skin represents the Jewish people, and the aggressive hand choking it is presumably the Jewish people. The snake's face has human qualities, including a stereotypical large nose that's associated with Jews.
Conversely, the illustration on the right shows the mice (symbolizing Jews) looking up at a folded Nazi flag depicting the swastika.
In comparing the two images, both use a symbol to represent a greater enemy: the Stars represent the Jews, and the swastika represents the Nazi regime. However, the two images differ in their use of color. "Don't Let Go" is mostly all white, with very minimal use of the color black. This contrasts with Spiegelman's illustrations, which employs darker colors like black and grey. This could symbolize the meaning of Nazism for the opposing sides. Most Germans viewed it as a symbol of light and hope that the color white is associated with; whereas the Jews had a very different interpretation of Hitler's Germany, relating it with death, grief, and loss of happiness.
Furthermore, "Don't Let Go" has a very aggressive connotation, with the hand literally squeezing the snake to death. On the other hand, Spiegelman's illustration shows the Jews solemnly looking up at the swastika. Looking at these images side by side can show who the aggressors are and who the oppressed are.

That's All Folks!

Right now it's 6:55 PM and I'm anxiously trying to write 250 words to get the saving grace grade  of 40/40. This is actually me right now:

Instead of writing about a broad topic of social injustices as I planned on, I'm going to have you, the readers, be my therapist, as Spiegelman so desperately needed in Volume 2 of Maus. Spiegelman said, "instead of working on my book I just lie on my couch for hours and stare at a small grease spot on the upholestery," (Volume II, page 43). This mirrors my situation, but instead of book it's my blog, and instead of lying on the couch for hours I sit on the couch for hours and watch "Gotham".
Every weekend, I feel the impending doom of the blog post coming up. While I do enjoy the feeling of satisfaction as encouraging comments come in, I feel as though every post has to be better than the next. Every post has to reach more comments than the last. And when they don't...

That means I did something wrong this time

This resulted in me writing this blog post with five minutes to spare. Ms. Valentino, no I didn't procrastinate. I started with a draft on Saturday! I was going to write about the guilt of leading an easier life than my parents, but I wasn't feeling that. Next, I was going to write about race and the role it play's in society, but I thought it wasn't good enough. I thought it wouldn't exceed the expectations my classmates had on me. So today at 6:30, I clicked CTR X. I looked at this blank page and tried to go somewhere and I couldn't. Therefore, you guys get this blog post: my explanatory apology. Before you scroll for more, because this is a short one, I'll just let you guys know: that's all, folks!

Survivor's Guilt

Maus Volume 1, page 102

In a book called Maus, with a picture of mice on the cover, and mice mostly throughout all the pages, this excerpt of the book was an extreme anomaly. This excerpt details the aftermath of Anja's suicide, specifically, her funeral. While there are less words, the illustrations are very elaborate and symbolic. For example, Art himself is wearing same uniform that many Jews would in the camps: a striped uniform. Although he's thousands of miles away from any camp, he still feels imprisoned. In Panel 2, a family friend says "Now you cry! Better you cried when your mother was still alive!". After he admonishes Art, the following boxes are surrounded with elaborate stripes, culminating in the third box, in which every aspect of it is various stripes. This is because what Art is imprisoned in is guilt. The guilt of not being there when it happened, of not being able to stop it, of surviving. In fact, the coffin itself is surrounded in the stripes of guilt, and not only Art is imprisoned, but also Vladek. Sadly, this is one of the several instances Vladek has been imprisoned.
Furthermore, the characters in this excerpt are portrayed as humans, not mice. While the motif of the stripes remains in the illustrations, the motif of mice is gone. This could be because in coping with the death of Anja, Art only had the raw, innate emotions of a human. He could not be classified as a mouse equals Jew in this, but as a human who is just a human. If he was portrayed as a mouse, the sunken, sorrowful look of his eyes could not be depicted, not in black dot equals eye format.

On an unrelated note, these illustrations remind me of Picasso's Blue period, during which Pablo Picasso went through severe depression after the suicide of his good friend. Although the colors and style are different, the tone and mood of both these sets of illustrations struck me as similar. Do you think it's a coincidence?

You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

Hey! "There's no profit in raising girls" (Kingston 46)! Oh, by the way, do you have a 4.0 GPA and a well-rounded personality acceptable enough to get into Harvard?

Uhhh, 

Raise your hand if that was a connection even a little too much for 11AP students (y'all better raise them, even we can't make sense of this B.S.)

The thing is, this very hypocrisy is accurate. In cultures ranging from Asian, Latin American, and even Western, many girls put the same amount of effort into their education and lives just as much as the boys. Interestingly enough, these girls are more scrutinized for any thing they do than the boys that can put aside all judgments of each other for a game of soccer. So let's think about this logically. Are girls really unprofitable? In cultures where birthing boys is like birthing gold, who can provide that? A woman. But we can't contain the worth of a woman by her reproductive skills. Women can be seen beyond their maternal side of nurturing, empathetic, and kind qualities. We are that, but also much more. We are everything but "profitless". Just like Fredrick Douglas thought it useless to argue for anti-slavery; I find it futile to argue that woman are worthy humans. If you payed even the slightest attention to humanity's history, you wouldn't need my assistance to come to that conclusion. 

But one thing people need to understand is they can't play both sides. You can't call a woman useless and tell her to become president in the same breath. There's positive reinforcement, and this is negative reinforcement. Sure, many of the very women you call "profitless" will strive ten times harder to be successful, but that doesn't mean you can pat yourself on the back for motivating them. You lost that right when you presumed any human is profitable in the first place. You can't demean a woman and then demand success from her, sorry! Just like they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too.