Thursday, December 2, 2010

Journal #26

This blog is about snooow! I think my opinion of snow changes depending on what I'm doing. If I'm sitting in my house looking outside, I like it. Snow is pretty, and fun to run around in even though I'm not a little kid anymore. If I'm driving, however, I hate snow with a fiery passion. My car is not four wheel drive, and it doesn't weigh a whole lot. I think I hate the ice on the roads that comes from snow even more than snow itself. Nobody likes to slip and slide around on the road. I also hate snow when I drive because I live on a country road, so when it snows a lot you can't see where the road is. The road is just one big blanket of snow, and it blends with the snow from the cornfields so it's all perfectly flat. I have lost track of how many people I have seen get stuck on my road because they think that the road is somewhere it isn't, so they drive right off of it and into the ditch. I think that's what I most afraid of this winter. Another reason I dislike snow is that I don't like the salt that is placed on the roads. It speeds up the corrosion of the metal under the car! I dislike that quite a lot.
I know it seems like I hate snow at this point, but I actually really like to watch snow and make snowmen. I made a 6-foot tall snowman last year! It was pretty cool. I would make snowangels, but that's a little bit too cold. You lay down in the snow, then it just goes into every opening of your coat and melts. And when you stand up, you mess up the snowangel!
I think overall, snow is a little bit more trouble than it's worth. Little kids love it, anybody who can drive hates it with a passion.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

"The Minister's Black Viel" - Dark Romanticism

I liked "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne a little more than "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe. I believe the psychological aspect of the story and the way that it depicts Dark Romanticism is much more affective than the doom and gloom found in "The Pit and the Pendulum." It was much more easy to relate to than Poe's story.
The main affect felt by "The Minister's Black Veil" was the way that humans are inherently evil by nature. Each one has all kinds of dark secrets and things they are ashamed of, which is what the pastor is trying to prove by wearing the black veil. His veil is used as a symbol of the evil and sins that separate people from one another, which is a characteristic of romanticism, specifically Dark Romanticism in that it talks about the evil tendencies of humans rather than goodness (Hawthorne).
Not only are humans naturally evil, but they are also prone to hiding their evil and closing it off from the rest of the world because they are ashamed. Most people are too afraid to do what the pastor did, which is showcase his sins and sadness to the world in the form of his veil. By doing this he took responsibility for his sins and the way they separate a person from the people around them if they are ignored and never addressed (Hawthorne).
The last thing I saw out of the story was that humans are naturally prone to judging each other rather than looking at their own faults, and they are scared by things that they do not want to address because they hit home way too closely. While yes, the pastor did wear his sins upon his face quite literally, the truth is that every person is just as guilty as he was. The people of the town knew him and his character, and they knew that he was a very good man, yet they chose to shut him out of their lives because he actually took responsibility for his sins and that scared them (Hawthorne).
The truth is we all have our own black veils. Whether they are deep dark secrets of things we have done it our past or simply evil thoughts we have entertained at times, we all possess them. The fact that we all possess them should teach us to be understanding of one another and the fact that we all have our faults. But instead of doing that we all choose to hide our own faults and point fingers at others in order to take t he attention away from ourselves. In this way we all suffer our own form of personal torture as the things that bother us slowly eat us up inside. If only we could all stop acting so high and mighty and admit that none of us are perfect, the world would be a much happier place. The fact that the pastor, one of the most holy men in that town, was the one able to step up and acknowledge that he is a sinner says a lot about our society. All of these dark truths that are revealed about society through this writing is a classic example of Dark Romanticism (Hawthorne).

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Minister's Black Veil." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature. Ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill. 2010. 280-289. Print.