The Tentative Conviction of Captain Fellows

Captain Fellows shows and even thinks of himself as the total opposite of his wife, that he himself is the epitome of what we can start as in life. That he is as convinced of his values as he could be, and truly believed that "he really felt the correct emotions of love and joy and grief and hate. He had always been a good man at zero hour." But when confronted by the situation of having a priest on the run bedding at his house, he finds himself in inner turmoil, trying to convince himself that the priest is a danger, but finally giving in to his visceral, pious inner self. This allowed him to be redeemed by the priest, for he would have perished spiritually if he had not the religious contact that he had almost forgotten his hunger for. But after tasting that luscious morsel he realized how much he had missed it and brought his family to partake of this gift.

People will be human, so though they may be convinced of their own convictions, there will always be circumstances that will make them shy from these.

The Futility of the Human Race and Elevated Self-Image of Gulliver

As the book goes on, the small self-image of Gulliver grows larger and larger, as well as his idea of the futility and hopelessness of the human race. Beginning with the Lilliputians, Gulliver is quite humbled being brought down by people a fraction of his size. But by the time he comes to the land of the Luggnagg, he finds himself ready to answer the question of what he would do if he was immortal. Then he finds the true disgustingness of what humans become when given the chance to live forever, and loses even more confidence in the human race. Next in his travels, in the land of Glubdubdrib, Gulliver finds the people in history he admired most committed the most wicked things to obtain their power. Some things he knew vaguely of, but these he condoned, figuring them to be rootless rumors. In reality, though, the crimes were much worse than even broad speculators imagined. At this point any remaining respect of the human race in his mind were decimated.

Similarity between Brobdingnagians and Lilliputians

The dealings of the Lilliputians that seemed so trivial to Gulliver made him believe he was superior and let him have a few moments of pride, but when he found himself in the land of the giants he gained a broader view of what we all really are like from a larger standpoint. In Lilliput he was at first treated like a prisoner, then a guest but then like a criminal. A similar pattern is developing in the land of the giants. First Gulliver was a prisoner paraded around the country for money, then sold to the queen, to whom he is a guest. The only problem is that the Brobdingnagians could squish him between two fingers if they found him at all displeasing. The viewpoint of the Brobdingnagians will develop, either for the good or for the bad.

The Literature of the Future

Comics are the literature of the future. Throughout the ages we have seen the attention spans of people drop at alarming rates. The onus for this is on pure human nature. Rather than labor through 1500 pages of War and Peace -- out of which people will get - at most- a headache -- they will be quickly satisfied by a strip that could make them laugh, consider other mentalities, or think deeply about a subject you had rarely pondered before. Chock full of symbolism, satire, and wholesome escapism, comics can enrich people, however subtly. This form of media will outlast any other. Videos and books will become things of the past, books because people will lack the attention span to take in ideas without visuals to aid them, and videos because humans will not be able to speak fast enough to make up for the speed of reading. Comics are the perfect balance of visuals and text.

Ice Skating

Unsteady, wobbling, I step out onto the ice on skates for the first time in five years, slipping, sliding, falling, but soon the lure of speed is too great. Any chafes on my legs are forgotten, along with all soreness and any ideas that I didn't know how to skate. I remove my heavy and encumbering jacket, hat and gloves, step back onto the ice, and fly, the pure euphoria of speed, breaking free of the concept of gravity, and discover the exhilaration of taking wing and soaring over the ice.

Island of Algae

The floating island represents an apparently safe haven for those castaway with no other help, luring fish into its grasp, perhaps with the promise of a hiding place or food, but then killing and digesting their remains. Like in Oliver Twist, and in reality a lot of the world, some impoverished people may be taken into a criminal organization, with the hope of a family, companions, or at the very least a caretaker. But instead they are recruited to do the dirty work no one else is willing to risk doing. They then get the blame, their masters get ever richer, and once they've been snatched by the authorities everyone forgets they ever existed.

Pi sees the island and how it seems so lush and sweet, how the cute, innocent mongooses feed off the "sins" of the island. He cleans the boat, feeds himself of the island, but then leaves realizing what the island really is and how what he is doing is just like what the mongooses are. This shows a glimmer of hope that he is not yet inhuman, that he still has a conscience. He is not like the uncaring mongooses who have no problem taking the profit of the island.

Book Stream of Consciousness

Quietly paging, like leaves, silently rustling…
In such small and seemingly insignificant work so great knowledge is contained…
When opened, surging out in all its power to the world…
In the right hands, establishing peace and prosperity, in the wrong hands razing them…
Imparting its knowledge to all willing to listen…
But when they leave, abandon this great power, tool, conduit for ideas, lost is all its glory…

Pure and Carnal Pleasures

It is hard to understand why Yann Martel uses the word delights. By delights he could mean wrongdoings, or real, pure delights. This is the question that will give meaning to the quote. The delights I believe represent the wicked pleasures we have in life. True happiness, however can only be gained by love, not be saturating, stuffing, gorging yourself on other people, hoping their strength will be transferred to you. This carnal, disgusting way of thinking is what separates animals from humans. We as humans have a conscience, a sense of guilt, while animals only understand the idea. But once that is forsaken, humans will regress and become just as bad or worse than animals. Love is a concept that we can use; it allows us to have a mutual relationship that allows us as humans together to become stronger than any other organism.

The Fall of the Family

The Fall Of The Family

View more documents from Jacob Stern.

Pressure

This is a response to a poem by Dilpreet Randhawa (a freshman) on his blog, reachingforglory.blogspot.com. I don't know; it's just a free form poem that I thought might sound kind of neat.
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Adversity
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Weak outer shell

Ruptured

Inner strength

Revealed

Character, nature

Hardened or broken

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Molding diamonds

Releasing a flood of greater potency

Revealing the best or the worst

~

Pressure