Media: The Mind Manipulator

The Danger of a Single Story:

Plenty of times have I realized that people only receive through media a single story of the beautiful country in which I have the privilege to live in. Two of this have engraved themselves in my mind. 

The first happened the first time I traveled to Europe. I had the priviledge to go to France with the Colombian Ambassador in France, and he took us to an amusement park. His son was probably my age (I was 10 at the time) and we where in line for a roller coaster. We where talking in Spanish and two older men asked us where were we from, I proudly raised my head and answered “Colombia”  this men, who where probably 20 years old each gave us the finger and said that ours was a country plagued with “terrible deaths and a thousand drug dealers”. My dad told them to shut up and leave us kids alone, but I will never forget the hate in the men’s voice.

The second time happened when I moved to Italy, my English had refined before that and I could fluently speak it with confidence and almost seem American. My first day at ISF, several teachers asked me to introduce myself: “what is your name? how old are you? Where are you from?” I answered them without trouble in the first couple of classes, but then when I got to my Math class and I answered them I heard the boy behind me ask, “ And where did you leave the Cocaine?” I was furious and wanted to yell at him but instead I answered in a serious voice  “In your Mom’s drawer.” Soon enough people stopped talking about things they didn’t understand and I learned a lot about different cultures.

Like the old saying “Don’t Judge a book by it’s cover” ,  today we should encourage people to not only see the “Media” side of the story

Bananafish, The Fog, or The Horror?

Survivor’s guilt, an insight into Kurtz’s character:

When I first came to CNG I had an English teacher, which every boy in my class considered astonishingly beautiful. Her name was Mrs. Lawrynowicz, and she made us read short stories in order to help us analyze literature better. One day she handed to us a short story the tittle read “A perfect day for Bananafish” , and told us to read it for our HWK. I read it a thousand times over and couldn’t really assimilate it inside my head. Suddenly it clicked in my head. Something I had read in a psychoanalysis essay, something about survivor’s guilt.

After that I had another English teacher. His approach to literature was quiet different, and he had us read Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest “ I have since then assimilated Mcmurphy’s character with that of Seymour Glass, the main character in “A perfect Day for Bananafish”. About Seymour’s character I am only going to say that what he has in common with McMuphy is that people looked up to him to be a hero. This little girl Sybil walked up to him everyday in the beach because he was her personal story teller, he was her separation from the unjust world in which she lived in, a world in which both her parents where absent. McMurphy had the entire ward looking up to him, because they needed someone who was stronger than them to guide them trough.

When I first read about Mr. Kurtz I saw him as Marlow saw him. Better than him, stronger, greater and by the end of “Heart of Darkness” Kurtz has become a symbol of heroism and standing up to what you believe in even if must people brand you mad for believing that.

That is one thing that this three characters have in common. People who look up to them, standing up for a cause and last but not least an unpleasant death. Glass kills himself, McMurphy is chocked by Chief, and Kurtz dies, living in his regrets.