Muchas personas de España tienen unas vistas diferentes de las familias estadounidenses, la gente joven y las mujeres estadounidenses de los que ellos están en realidad. Las reciben sus opiniones de los programas modernos de televisión, a pesar de que están inexactos.
A los españoles, las familias de los Estados Unidos son muy disfuncional y se pelean mucho. Un programa de televisión moderno muy popular es The Simpsons. Esa programa es sobre de una familia muy, muy disfuncional, pero por los españoles es un vislumbre de que ellos consideren la familia típica de los Estados Unidos. En The Simpsons, el padre alcohólico que es estúpido, emboto y perezoso. Él pone su familia en situaciones extranjeros por su idiotez. La madre es la madre ideal que se pone su familia siempre primero y hace lo mejor para ellos. El hijo es bromisto y resulta que él está castigado mucho del tiempo. La hija mayor es muy inteligente y no tiene ningunas amigas en su escuela debido a su inteligencia. Otro ejemplo es The King of Queens. En este programa de televisión, el hombre es gordo, feo y tiene poco inteligencia y entonces trabaja para el UPS. Su esposa es una mujer bonita que no ha completado colegio. Ellos se discutan sobre muchas cosas ridículas todo el tiempo. El padre de la mujer viene a vivir con ellos. Él es excéntrico y la causa de muchos problemas en su casa. A pesar de que está anciano, la pareja no se muestra respeto a él mucho el tiempo.
La gente joven de los Estados Unidos tiene la peor reputación de los tres grupos discutido. Muchos de los programas de televisión demuestran una idea a los muy malo. Por ejemplo, en el programa de televisión That 70s Show, ven gente joven que no tiene respecto por sus padres ó la autoridad. Se responden sin respecto a sus padres todo el tiempo. Una niña quien se llama Donna tiene un novio y ellos tienen relaciones sexuales sin protección y sin estarse casados, mostrando el actitud y conducto inmoral que no está típico del promedio joven estadounidense pero que los españoles lo reciben para formar su opinión. Luego es el programa The Secret Life of an American Teenager que básicamente dice que está normal y bueno para un joven a tener relaciones sexuales sin casamiento y es normal a llegar a ser embarazada. Una niña es inteligente, talentosa, y una raye a tipa que está embarazada. Su amiga es una cristiana que cree que ninguna deber a tener relaciones sexuales hasta casamiento. Secretos que está diciendo parezcan y padres llegan a ser enojados. Pero, la programa insista que no hay ningunos problemas con la conducta inmoral de los jóvenes.
Las mujeres estadounidenses no reciben una reputación buena de las programas de televisión. Un ejemplo excelente es A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, un programa sobre una mujer que se gustan mujeres y hombres y los dos géneros compiten a estar su amante. En este cortejando y programa concurso hayan diez y siete hombres heterogéneos y diez y siete mujeres lesbianas compiten para los cariños de la mujer bisexual quien se llama Tila Tequila. Este programa produce una imagen falsa de mujeres mayorías de los Estados Unidos. Es rara para una mujer estadounidense ser bisexual ó lesbiana en realidad. Un ejemplo final de los equivocaciones comunes de mujeres es The Hills. Aunque es sobre más joven mujeres, representa un percepción falso de muchas mujeres estadounidenses. Las chicas son muy hermosas y sociales pero en otra vez son inmorales. Se viven con sus novios en apartamentos en California y viven una vida social y de moda. La mayoría de sus noches están en las barras y clubes nocturnos de la ciudad con embriaguez y baile. Aunque algunas mujeres beben alcohol y viven con sus novios, este facto no es verdad para la mayoría de la población de mujeres en los Estados Unidos y representa un equivocación muy mal y serio.
En conclusión, los programas de televisión no dan las personas estadounidenses un buen reputación. Hay muchos ejemplos de este fenómeno además de los arriba. Aunque hayan algunas personas que son como las en los programas de televisión que está mencionado, no es una imagen exacta de la mayoría de la población de los Estados Unidos. Hay jóvenes embarazados, inmoralidad, familias disfuncionales, mujeres promiscuos, falta de respeto por los ancianos y muchas otras cosas, pero no significan todos los estadounidenses. Españoles se recibían un foto muy obscurezca de lo que los estadounidenses son en realidad.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
A Plucked Flower and a Missing Buttock: The Innate Love for Life
In his work Candide, the old women pridefully recounts her tragic life story in protest to Candide and Cunegonde’s complaints of suffering, producing a comedic effect that substantially contributes to the overall satire of Voltaire’s work by demonstrating the innate love and passion for life within all human beings regardless of insufferable circumstances.
Like Cunegonde and Candide, the old woman begins life among the beautiful and elite of her country, experiencing the benefits of affluence. Unexpectedly, their lives make a complete reversal, removing them not only from comfort and prosperity, but inflicting them with intense physical and emotional suffering. Emotionally, both the princess and Candide experience the loss of lovers, but they never lose hope of reuniting. In the mean time, because of their virginal beauty, both Cunegonde and the princess experience the brutality of repeated rape. While the princess is initially preserved for the captain alone, Cunegonde is subject to the erotic desires of soldiers and later of wealthy benefactors. The old woman compares the loss of her virginity to the plucking of a beautiful flower, being a beautifully chaste blossom ready for her betrothed, but forcefully spoilt at human whim. In a magnificent satire, the old woman is raised in a secluded garden to glorious maturation, but her splendor is seized and crushed by men without care for beauty and purity. Her hope in the good of humanity is rigidly tried as Voltaire further derides her love as an aristocratic arrogance, decrying her for enjoying the benefits of her station in life while others suffer.
Although all the captured women are quartered upon their arrival in Morocco, the princess manages to escape and unite with her mother’s former eunuch, who promises to return her to her homeland, but instead sells her into slavery. Catching the plague but surviving, she is resold several times, and ultimately becomes a “rump roast” for starving soldiers fighting the Russians. Voltaire satirizes sacrifice as ultimately useless when, in a mockery of her pain, the removal of her buttock proves futile as a few days later her torturers are slaughtered by the Russians. Refusing to relinquish the dreadful life she holds so dear, the woman is healed by French doctors, only to be enslaved once more. Despite her fruitless sacrifice and suffering, the old woman stubbornly clings to her hopeless existence, though it shows no hope of improvement.
In closing her story, the old woman seems to have given up on life, but hope still lays disguised in her voice. “A hundred times I wanted to kill myself,” she said, “but always I loved life more” (538). Innate love for life and the inability to be rid of the charge to live are a human’s worst instincts. Though seemingly pessimistic, there is optimism in her words. The love for life that she describes implies a passionate desire for life, rather than a tolerant apathy towards it. She analogizes humanities grasp on life to “fond[ling] the serpent which devours us till it has eaten out our hearts” (538). Rather than merely holding the snake, she characterizes humanity as “fondling,” a word depicting loving caresses rather than dispassionate touches. Perhaps through her word choice the old woman secretly wishes to display the innate love of life that she pridefully holds. Furthermore, she points out that, although many may hate their existence, few will purposefully and deliberately give up their lives, all possessing an innate sense of love for their lives as their own.
In conclusion, Voltaire satirizes humanities love for life via his crudely comical tale about the haggard old “princess” in Candide. Many engrossing ideas about hope, optimism, and love of life instigate questions about reality in a world that is today greatly deprived of reason.
Works Cited
Voltaire, Francois-Marie Arouet de. "Candide, or Optimism." The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Sarah N. Lawall and Maynard Mack. 2nd ed. Vol. D. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company Limited, 2004. 520-79.
Like Cunegonde and Candide, the old woman begins life among the beautiful and elite of her country, experiencing the benefits of affluence. Unexpectedly, their lives make a complete reversal, removing them not only from comfort and prosperity, but inflicting them with intense physical and emotional suffering. Emotionally, both the princess and Candide experience the loss of lovers, but they never lose hope of reuniting. In the mean time, because of their virginal beauty, both Cunegonde and the princess experience the brutality of repeated rape. While the princess is initially preserved for the captain alone, Cunegonde is subject to the erotic desires of soldiers and later of wealthy benefactors. The old woman compares the loss of her virginity to the plucking of a beautiful flower, being a beautifully chaste blossom ready for her betrothed, but forcefully spoilt at human whim. In a magnificent satire, the old woman is raised in a secluded garden to glorious maturation, but her splendor is seized and crushed by men without care for beauty and purity. Her hope in the good of humanity is rigidly tried as Voltaire further derides her love as an aristocratic arrogance, decrying her for enjoying the benefits of her station in life while others suffer.
Although all the captured women are quartered upon their arrival in Morocco, the princess manages to escape and unite with her mother’s former eunuch, who promises to return her to her homeland, but instead sells her into slavery. Catching the plague but surviving, she is resold several times, and ultimately becomes a “rump roast” for starving soldiers fighting the Russians. Voltaire satirizes sacrifice as ultimately useless when, in a mockery of her pain, the removal of her buttock proves futile as a few days later her torturers are slaughtered by the Russians. Refusing to relinquish the dreadful life she holds so dear, the woman is healed by French doctors, only to be enslaved once more. Despite her fruitless sacrifice and suffering, the old woman stubbornly clings to her hopeless existence, though it shows no hope of improvement.
In closing her story, the old woman seems to have given up on life, but hope still lays disguised in her voice. “A hundred times I wanted to kill myself,” she said, “but always I loved life more” (538). Innate love for life and the inability to be rid of the charge to live are a human’s worst instincts. Though seemingly pessimistic, there is optimism in her words. The love for life that she describes implies a passionate desire for life, rather than a tolerant apathy towards it. She analogizes humanities grasp on life to “fond[ling] the serpent which devours us till it has eaten out our hearts” (538). Rather than merely holding the snake, she characterizes humanity as “fondling,” a word depicting loving caresses rather than dispassionate touches. Perhaps through her word choice the old woman secretly wishes to display the innate love of life that she pridefully holds. Furthermore, she points out that, although many may hate their existence, few will purposefully and deliberately give up their lives, all possessing an innate sense of love for their lives as their own.
In conclusion, Voltaire satirizes humanities love for life via his crudely comical tale about the haggard old “princess” in Candide. Many engrossing ideas about hope, optimism, and love of life instigate questions about reality in a world that is today greatly deprived of reason.
Works Cited
Voltaire, Francois-Marie Arouet de. "Candide, or Optimism." The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Sarah N. Lawall and Maynard Mack. 2nd ed. Vol. D. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company Limited, 2004. 520-79.
Who Will Answer Opportunity's Knock
It is funny how one cannot wait to get away from something to the point where that's all one thinks about, talks about, dreams about, and lives for; and then, finally, when the time rolls around for it to pass by and move on, one feels a sense of nostalgic loyalty that causes one to reconsider one's desire to be rid of it altogether. One wants to wonder if it should go just now, or if one should connive some way for it to remain a bit longer. There are so many components to weigh and options to consider.
Although one has lived at time in agony over this thing, and even held a fervent urge to dismiss it from one's life instantly and altogether, yet it is a comfort of sorts that might be a better option than the very idea of change. Who is to say which is better- change to the unknown and unforseen, or persevere in a possibly unpleasant normality and familiarity? Are the risks too high and the potential costs too great?
Then there is the sound ringing in one's ears that is the sounds of opportunity knocking. There it stares one in the face- the option to move on to a possibly better quality of life or to pass it by and maintain the safety of familiarity. New life with risks and adventures of unknown outcomes, or predictable patters of living? Which will it be? As the reverberating sounds of opportunity's knock fill one's head, one sifts throught the pros and cos and does one's best to weight out the best decision. But in the end, a choice must be made one way or the other. Sure, there will be certain risks and unknown variables, but they go both ways- they are simply part of living life.
Ultimately, those who decide decide to answer opportunity's vivacious knocks and step out on that limb are the brave and adventurous few who are ready to take life by the horns and ride it for all it is worth. Fear may come, but fleetingly. Fatigue may overtake, but momentarily. Shadows of the past may creep up, but they will not overtake. Perseverance and hope will breed accomplishment and passion. Opportunity will be answered; and when the time for change comes, the nostalgic loyalty will quickly pass in exchange for a vivid love of life and all the new it brings ones way. Only the courageous will truly live.
Although one has lived at time in agony over this thing, and even held a fervent urge to dismiss it from one's life instantly and altogether, yet it is a comfort of sorts that might be a better option than the very idea of change. Who is to say which is better- change to the unknown and unforseen, or persevere in a possibly unpleasant normality and familiarity? Are the risks too high and the potential costs too great?
Then there is the sound ringing in one's ears that is the sounds of opportunity knocking. There it stares one in the face- the option to move on to a possibly better quality of life or to pass it by and maintain the safety of familiarity. New life with risks and adventures of unknown outcomes, or predictable patters of living? Which will it be? As the reverberating sounds of opportunity's knock fill one's head, one sifts throught the pros and cos and does one's best to weight out the best decision. But in the end, a choice must be made one way or the other. Sure, there will be certain risks and unknown variables, but they go both ways- they are simply part of living life.
Ultimately, those who decide decide to answer opportunity's vivacious knocks and step out on that limb are the brave and adventurous few who are ready to take life by the horns and ride it for all it is worth. Fear may come, but fleetingly. Fatigue may overtake, but momentarily. Shadows of the past may creep up, but they will not overtake. Perseverance and hope will breed accomplishment and passion. Opportunity will be answered; and when the time for change comes, the nostalgic loyalty will quickly pass in exchange for a vivid love of life and all the new it brings ones way. Only the courageous will truly live.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)