Entering into my final year at Loyola, I was taken back by how quickly these past three years have gone by. It is so easy to go through the years without noticing what has truly happened to us and those around us. In our most recently read book, Whale Rider, we discussed the importance of stopping, and taking in the true beauty in the life around us.
Odds Bodkin also helped me realize the importance of visualization. He told the story of Odysseus and the struggle he went thought to get back home. Interestingly enough, he told the story on his own, just him and his guitar. For each character, he created a new voice, resulting in the visualization of a character. Each description and each section of the story was done with such intricacy that I could imagine each character from their face down to the type of clothes they wear. Once I was able to picture each character, their specific voices helped me depict one from the other while the points in the story were changing. Listening to the story, and being taken into a different world while sitting in a room full of other Loyola students, I couldn't help but feel a deep gratitude to this magnificent story teller and his ability to take me away from it all with nothing but a guitar and his voice.
Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" displayed the importance of relationships with our peers. In the poem, the hypothetical idea of a wall or a fence, is really a relationship. I think it is so easy to go through life without making relationships with those around us, and to stick to our social norms. However, living next to someone is a great way to create a stronger relationship. In this poem, you truly see the difference in what is is to stay caged behind a wall, rather than building fencings with those around you. I think the comparison to this poem is shown in Jill McDonough's "Accident, Mass Ave." This poem comes off as more of a story for me, and after learning how to truly visualize words this past Thursday at Odds Bodkin, I was able to see this poem in my mind as I read along. It is about two women, living in Boston who get into a minor car accident that resulted in absolutely no damage for either vehicle. However, because of the culture they were in, and the social norms they knew to be acceptable, both women got out of their cars and immediately began yelling and cursing one another out. However, after coming to the realization that no damage had been done, the two women embrace to calm one another down for one of the women began to cry. I believe this poem represents how easy it is to let the culture that surrounds us, form our reactions to incidents much like this. It was clear that both women were scared and overwhelmed by what had happened. It is also clear that our lives can often result in these emotions as well. Still, as our society continues to evolve, and as we become wiser from experience and education it is important to take others emotions into account, and be there for one another rather than putting up walls, and cursing each other out. Frances E. W. Harper's "Learning to Ready" touches upon this. It speaks of how education would make slaves "all too wise" and how education was against their master's rule. Again, education and experience are both excellent ways to understand how to react with others. Still, if education is held from individuals, how will anyone be able to learn from the past mistakes that have been made. For example, these poems are ways that we can learn as students, and are amazing outlets for us to lean how to act, and how to treat others.
No comments:
Post a Comment