Month: October 2017

In Suzanne Collins’ book, she paints an extremely grim dystopian society, where the people of the Capitol are raised up on the exploitations of their people. While their people labor day and night in districts surrounding the capitol, the citizens of the Capitol lavish in extravagance and comfort such as delicious meals at the touch of a button or weird fashion standards that can change any day. When I first read the Hunger Games in elementary school, it was just a really interesting book filled with gore, action, drama, and an new, interesting dystopian setting. However, now looking back at it, I feel like there are lots of similarities and parallels to our own society despite the dystopian setting of the Hunger Games.

One thing that stands out to me the most is the systemic disadvantages that exist at each level designed to separate and divide the people of the districts. With the concept of the tessera’s, it is easy to see how there exist such a systemic disadvantage towards the poor. This reminds me greatly of how privilege exists in our own society and how people like white, cis, middle-class citizens have inherently an easier life than others. These people of the districts cannot change the fact that they are poor and it only decreases the disadvantages against them. Even for someone as hardworking as Katniss, sometimes the hard work can not make up for everything but only help them get by. The Hunger Games especially highlights system discrimination in our own society. Sure, everybody can get a shot and become famous and rich, but not everyone can be like that. The risks also associated with being elevated to that status are almost life and death. I think while Suzanne Collins’ book is a very interesting read for many, it also highlights many issues in our own society and just like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it could possibly be a political statement of our own society.

A knight and his court should stand for the good values of chivalry and virtue. However, that is not something I saw in the reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Arthur seemed childish when he was shown as impatient for waiting for his food and impatient for a fight. Then when he finally got his fight, he simply told Gawain to chop off the head to get it over quickly with, he just wanted to return back to his feast. Obviously, these events display King Arthur as childish and he is certainly not close to a hero. If the king of a court does not have good morals himself, then can his court and his people have good morals if they do not have a morally correct leader?

I think Sir Gawain certainly does show potential for being a true hero even if he is under King Arthur and followed his order to chop of the Green Knight’s head. Gawain stood up and offered to take King Arthur’s place in exchanging blows which shows a willingness to place himself in a potentially dangerous situation in order to protect those which he finds important. Him following orders only shows that he will do anything for his king and queen which is what he is supposed to do. However, one would question whether it would have been the more heroic thing to not follow the King Arthur’s order in order to maintain honor. Or in those times was it worse for your honor to not follow the order of your king?

To an outsider, a person kicking a vending machine is seen as an angry violent person. However, to the person kicking the vending machine, their late bus, their angry boss, missed deadlines, and lost wallet all make his actions justified.

As readers, we are the outsiders looking onto the Knight of the Cart as he goes on his journey. When he made his decision to take shelter on the condition to lay with a girl despite having his own girl, many would judge him for his actions because he is making the decision to be unfaithful to his girl. However, I believe that this may be one of the situations where his past experiences and knowledge makes his decision unavoidable to him as he literally does state “he saw he had no choice”(pg 219), however to an outsider, it simply looks crazy and bad. He has a quest and in order to fulfill it, he needs to be able to continue on traveling day after day. As a knight in the medieval ages, he may have knowledge that the girl’s offer would be one of the only offers he could get or that he would definitely need to take this girl’s offer because he would not be able to go on any further without shelter for the night. As a knight, he felt obligated to go throughout this journey and this shelter offered is the only way for him to complete his quest.

Many call the Knight of the Cart for his success in saving the girl but I would say that the Knight of the Cart is a hero for a different reason. I think the Knight of the Cart is a hero because he was willing to give up one the biggest aspects of his life, love, in order to be able to fulfill his duty as a knight and complete his quest that his queen assigned him.

Last Friday night, I watched the Kingsman: Golden Circle with my friends. The movie centralizes around the story of Eggsy, a spy who loses his organization to the attacks of a drug cartel called the Golden Circle. The Golden Circle takes them down in order to be able to push their agenda of forcing the president to legalize all drugs so they can become part of the legal market. Eggsy has to travel to the US in order to meet up with another spy organization and get their help to take down the Golden Circle.

The whole movie focuses heavily on the hero aspect as it literally is the story of how Eggsy saves the world and becomes a hero however while watching the movie, many characteristics of Eggsy made me think even deeper about who a hero is and what they have to do. After their bases are destroyed, Eggsy is approached by his mentor, Merlin, and reminded that they cannot let their dead comrades, friends and destroyed bases detract from their mission. They must remove emotion from their objectives in order to save the world. The movie shows what happens when one ends up letting their emotions interfere too much with what they are meant to do. (The next sentence is vague due to trying to not reveal too many spoilers.) One of the antagonists reveals they fight Eggsy because his wife and child were killed by one of the people they were trying to save. Ultimately if the antagonist succeeded, millions would have died showing how if one lets their emotions get the better of them, they ultimately lose sight of what being a true hero is. 

This scene introduced a new characteristic of who a hero is to me; a hero must be able to work towards their goal or the greater good without letting their personal judgments or demons affect their work. In a way, heroes should be apathetic because while emotions may help push one towards their goal, it can also detract from the morality of what they do or even change what they ultimately end up doing. It reminds me of how in the military, obedience and discipline are hammered into recruits early on because in the end, if they let their emotions get the best of them, they may end up failing their original objective.