Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Blogging part 4

John Jacob
EN 101.16
10/17/2013
Blog post 4
Perseverance
            In the readings, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, “Theology” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countee Cullen’s “Tableau,” all obtain a certain aspect of perseverance. Victor, the protagonist in Frankenstein, wants to learn more of the natural sciences and philosophy. Dunbar writes about how there is a heaven. The speaker in Cullen’s poem “Tableau,” uses two particularly different boys to show friendship despite their obstacles.
            Victor, the protagonist of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, clearly likes to learn.  At the age of thirteen he was reading about Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus who all contributed to Victor’s inspiration of the natural sciences. Wanting to prolong his education, he decided to attend university in Ingolstadt. He met with a professor named M. Krempe who criticized Victor’s heroes saying that what he learned was “nonsense.” However, once he met with his Chemistry professor, M. Waldman, who accepted the studies of Victor’s inspirations, encouraged Victor to further continue his love to study science. Despite the remarks of M. Krempe, Victor persevered to search for his opportunity to continue his education with his inspiring scientists  as his foundation of learning.
            “Theology” by Dunbar is a short poem called an epigram. In his epigram he writes about his “longing” to go to heaven. He believes that “there is a heaven, for ever, day by day,” as written in the first line of the poem. Everyday his “soul” longs for heaven and he is confident that there is one everyday. Through this poem Dunbar shows perseverance to keep the faith into their being a heaven.
            The poem “Tableau” is written about two boys, one black, and one white. The first line “Locked arm in arm they cross the way,” shows the intimacy in their relationship despite the time period they live in where “lowered blinds the dark fold stare And here the fair folk talk,” meaning they didn’t show weakness to those who judged their friendship.  Because of this, they preserve through their enemies as is said in the last two lines of the poem “They pass, and see no wonder That lighting brilliant as a sword should blaze the path of thunder.”

            On Monday, I had to attend a mandatory lecture called “Matthew and the end of the world” for my theology course presented by Dr. Alison. He asked us “Why do we always try to predict the end of the world?” He mentioned how people in the past have tried to persevere towards a conclusion of the world. He added that these assumptions appear because we believe that our time is the most important time, and how we tend to believe that everything bad happens during our existence. In some way, I can agree, however, I believe that instead of persevering to find an ending we need to persevere to find ourselves. If we have all the time in the world, why spend that time finding the countdown.

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