The Fog

Every time I read Ken Kessey's masterpiece "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" I can't help but ask myself What does crazy look like? Is crazy really something that you can label under stereotypes and give it funny and complicated names? "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" gave me a different perspective of crazy and led me to decide that a crazy person is only what society makes him.

I think that the so called fog is a schizophrenic delusion, created by Chief Bromden  as a safe guard that he creates around him to make himself invisible; But also I see the fog as a kind of isolator that Nurse Ratched uses to isolate the Inside world from the Outside world, because she knows that they are not ready to cope. And I also think it represent McMurphy's strength because once he gets to the guard the fog dissipates, slowly from Chief's mind and it is thanks to McMurphy's strength and power to laugh.

Finally I think that the Fog represents the outside world unknown and strange for most, and hiding you from staying out.

Waiting For Godot: Film

So in class we watched a short clip from a film adaptation of Becket's existentialist play "Waiting For Godot" and we where supposed to do some "Reading" on the filming, scenery and staging, and draw conclusions as on why was the movie recorded in one way or another.

In the short clips there is a huge importance given to the scenery, specially Estrogen's boots at the beginning of the movie, and the tree throughout it. Also something else  that I thought was important was the lack of color throughout the movie, which kind of implies the mood of the movie itself, specially during Lucky's speech everything is very gloomy and dark.

I think the film was a great chance to see the play through someone else's eyes, in this case the eyes of the director and how he interpreted Becket.

Waiting For Godot: Blog Response #1

After I finished reading waiting for Godot, I found myself wandering about much, which I think is Becket's purpose with his Absurdist play. I found myself wandering about the characters, about why where they even waiting for Godot, and more than anything who was Godot. But later that evening I learned that Becket said on an interview that if he had known more about his characters he would have written it on the play. This makes me ask myself, How much can a writer actually know his own characters?

Even now I think that Becket left this gaps in the text in order for the reader to interpret whatever he said, in whichever way they wanted, which reminds me of something else he said on an interview "Why do people have to complicate everything?" And it made me analyze my way of thought as a reader, how much do we complicate what a writer says and why do we complicate it? Because words cant just be words, they must have a deeper meaning. Looking back at what I know about Becket I understand why he hates labels, because not only are they labeling him, but they are also labeling parts of his text as "Symbolism" or "Imagery", which limits the ability of the reader to just wonder without having to give the text an exact meaning.

Becket made a really extraordinary work on his "Waiting for Godot" he could have left and entire page BLANK and leave it without a conclusion and it would still be fantastic!

Blog Response #3: Introduction to existentialism

 Existence is essentially absurd:

Why does God exist? I am pretty sure someone most have asked that question sometime before me, probably not sitting in front of a window wondering how to write the introduction for their English assignment but surely someone must have asked it at some point. For me after thinking about this subliminal question I've come to the conclusion that human beings need a reason that supports their existence, and that is why God exists. Because for most of us we cannot just be here, there most be a reason for our existence. If not it is essentially pointless, and it doesn't make a difference whether we are dead of alive. For me this is a topic highly brought upon in the novel "The Stranger" by Albert Camus, in the second part of the book after he has been sentenced to the Guillotine, Mersault expresses that death is just a great new adventure, he thought of it as a fresh start, so for him it didn't really matter if his execution came today or the day after for he was ready to embrace death as an old friend.

"Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe." (pg. 75)