Monday, August 17, 2020
College Essay Advisors
College Essay Advisors As a small child, I did not fully grasp the implications of translation and the issues that arise from recitation. Now, as a student of Latin, I understand the strain of translation. No two translations are ever the same, usually due to the education and bias of the translator. The Dâaulaireâs remain true to the wildly complex myths of Ancient Greece while crafting an accessible book for children. But all of the sympathetic characters are fulfilled and have appeared to live their lives with intention, so their ends are far from tragic. I am tempted to write about a more important book, something a little weightier and more historic, but I feel it would be most appropriate to write about Jane Eyre. Itâs a book thatâs exceptionally significant to me because it has been an exceptional source of comfort. I think it may be the moral certainty we now have about that war. Nazis are evil, we know that now, or at least many of us do, but at the time, the war raged for three years before the United States entered. Even when we finally joined we only declared war on the Nazis in response to their declaration of war on us. Clever minds like Lehrer, Vonnegut, and Heller looked at Americans patting themselves on the back after the war, as if we had won a moral victory. Like Yosarian I think it is important to question my reality, and view what I am told is âcommon senseâ with skepticism. While Clevenger just blindly believed and followed what he was told was patriotic, Yosarian questioned why a bunch of people he didnât know wanted to kill him. The aspect of Clevenger that I identify with is not the blind followership, but followership nonetheless. I may not agree with the goal we pursue or how we try to reach it, but if I am given a job to do I will do it thoroughly and with all my effort. Being given the Sisyphean task of killing our way out of an insurgency, the only response I can have is to work very hard to be sure that the warheads are landing on the right foreheads. The Yosarian in me changes the question from âHow do we succeed? â to âHow do we minimize the loss of civilian and allied life while we inevitably fail? â The Clevenger in me responds to this new question with a sense of patriotic, even divine, duty. The story does not shy away from the dark and confusing. The characters struggle with death and injustice and poverty. The same people who hadnât wanted to fight the Nazis in 1939 or earlier were now congratulating themselves for defeating them. I can see aspects of both Yosarian and Clevenger in myself. Pashtuns are the ethnic group that make up a majority of the fighters in that country and they have a system of core beliefs that make one a Pashtun called Pashtunwali. One aspect of this is Badal, or retribution, essentially meaning that if someone harms or even insults a friend or family member it is your duty as a Pashtun to take revenge, generally by spilling blood. Because of this, for every fighter we kill, we create a whole family of new fighters. This never-ending cycle is the reason Afghans have been fighting almost constantly since 1979. This is why I think that âwarheads on foreheadsâ is strategically counterproductive. I find value in the bookâs happy endings, made more meaningful because their happiness is not derived from objective circumstances, but by the power of each characterâs belief system. At the end of the book, the reader finds St. John is about to die, Mr. Rochester is badly disabled, Helen Burns is long dead, and Jane isnât doing anything particularly worthy of ambition. I once heard art defined as anything that makes its audience feel and react. I like this definition, so Iâll posit that any art that causes a person to feel, greatly, is great. So Iâll make Jane Eyre my great book, as it has caused me to feel greatly solaced. In a well-written book, life-altering challenges and mundane activities alike are transfigured into something of consequence, as if they are part of a grand, unperceivable pattern. I finished re-reading the book in late December and the experience was well timed. This gives me hope that every individual holds ultimate power over her or his own life. They can decide if it is most meaningful to live with dignity, or with kindness, or with passion. Whatever the ultimate outcome, if they have made choices based on their principles, their ending is happy.
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