New Cause for Gogol's Denial of India

Most days before I start my homework, I use my computer to watch the episode of “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart that aired the night before. I like watching Jon Stewart primarily because of his pro-America stance on global issues but also because of his comedic presentation of the recent news. Coincidentally, last night an author named Anand Giridharadas was Stewart’s guest on the show. This author was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio and currently works as a columnist for The New York Times. Giridharadas is the son of two first-generation immigrants from India and consequently, he lived a life similar to Gogol as a younger child.  In the interview Giridharadas explains how he tried to ignore his Indian heritage during his years before college because he wanted to try to fit in with everyone else around him. He said that he grew up hating India because he perceived it as a stagnant and stifling country. I found this very interesting because this was an aspect we never really examined with Gogol. We always talked about how Gogol rejected Indian culture because he wanted to fit in in America or because he wanted to rebel against his parents. However, we never really thought that Gogol could be ashamed of the country his parents were born in. Maybe, Gogol was not ashamed of India, but he grew up at nearly the same time as Giridharadas so the possibility is definitely there. Giridharadas explained that as a child he thought that “India was a place that he would rather not be from” because he did not want to be associated with the caste system that India was famous for. To his parents’ dismay, he moved to Bombay after college, in 2003, to work as a consultant for McKinsey & Company. After some time working as a consultant for local governments and other businesses, he completed a four-and-a-half-year tour reporting from India for The New York Times. Jon Stewart humorously asked him why he decided to move back to India after his parents had worked desperately hard to try to get out of there. Giridharadas responded by explaining how during college he began to accept his Indian heritage and he took great interest in learning about the modern development of Indian culture. Within the last ten years, India has grown as a country and now the people there are beginning to disregard the caste system that has always been in place. His parents were a little upset when he did not follow the life plan they had laid out for him, like Gogol’s parents were, because “they came here to live the American dream, their son was the embodiment of the American dream, and the American dream was still alive, but it was just alive in India.” While in India he learned a lot about the Indian caste system. And just a brief explanation for anyone unfamiliar with the idea: in a caste system, a person’s position in society does not depend on what he or she has accomplished, how smart he or she is, or how hard he or she works. The only thing that determines the class in society that someone belongs to is their family name. While watching the interview the pervasive class of AP English of course crossed my mind and I could not help but wonder whether this tainted perception that Giridharadas had of India during his younger years was something that Gogol experienced as well.

Jon Stewart

Anand Giridharadas

Blogs Are Not Just Fun and Games

For those of you who have known me for many years, you will know that I am not a big fan of change. In preschool I would cry for hours on end when we would try a new activity or go to the classroom next door to watch a movie because I like continuity. I am a creature of habit so of course, when I first heard about this blog project I was a little uneasy about starting something like this. My skepticism soon vanished as I saw not only how much fun it is to blog, but also how much of an educational benefit the blog is. The blog has been a great way to improve my confidence as a writer. At first, I was terrified of the thought of putting my writing out in the open for all to scrutinize. I was worried about how my writing would be perceived or ridiculed on the World Wide Web. However, over time I began to gain more confidence in my ability as a writer and I began to not be so timid towards showing others my work. Knowing that each blog entry will be posted online for all to read and see has really helped me learn how to produce something that I will be able to proudly attach my name to. Also, the amount of repetition helps us all to improve our English skills. By writing so many entries and making comments on other people’s blogs, we have been able to explore and experiment with the English language. This exploration and experimentation are essential to progressing towards our common goal of becoming better all around writers. Because like many, I do not just want to be able to write a solid argument essay, but I want to improve my control on the English language as a whole. As Malcolm Gladwell illustrates in Outliers, there is a 10,000 hour rule that all people must meet before achieving success in a given area. He states that one must practice a specified subject area for 10,000 hours before they can truly be successful. Now, the blog may not quite satisfy the 10,000 hour requirement for English (but maybe the datasheet will?), but it certainly gives us a start as we move into our years of education beyond High School. I am thankful for the amount of repetition that the Blog has allowed me to complete in a fun and interesting way. Additionally, the blog has helped transition me from someone who hated English and took it because I had to, to someone who looks forward to class and does not mind writing assignments anymore. Before junior year, I absolutely hated writing papers and essays for English. However, my time with Ms. Serensky has helped me to reach the point where now I really almost enjoy writing papers and assignments. When I talked to Ms. Serensky after my junior year, I told her that one of my hopes for AP English was that it would take away that amount of stress that comes over me when I think about an English paper I must write. I must say that so far, I am coming very close to that goal. Not all of the success of meeting this goal can be attributed to the blog, but it certainly helped me to write creatively and try to write about ideas that interest other viewers.

            The amount of blogs in the world has reached 133 million recently and so the popularity of this relatively new way to express ideas is undeniable. It has been very fun and interesting to be a part of this new phenomenon and have my own blog. I understand why so many people have their own blogs, because it is very exciting to post my own ideas and then compare them to the ideas of others. This brings me to my next point, I have really grown so fond of the whole blogging experience because I like learning from my peers and being exposed to their creative and intellectual viewpoints. I find it very interesting to read about the very smart topics that my fellow classmates choose to blog about each week.

            I have only found one small difficulty with the blog project; sometimes it is difficult to come up with two interesting topics in a week. Blogging is a lot of fun when one has a creative or unique idea to write about. But when one has nothing, it can be a little painful to try to make a story out of some small event or occurrence. There is no real solution for this but I thought I should mention the only small downfall of blogging.

            As is evident from the length of this entry, I have really enjoyed blogging and I am thankful for the educational benefits my classmates and I have gained from this new social media outlet.

Shutter Island...Good or Bad?

I am not usually a big fan of movies because the endings are usually not so great. There is nothing worse than watching a movie for two hours and then being left with an inconclusive ending. I bring this topic up because last night I watched the movie, Strangers. Those of you who have seen it before understand what I mean about a terrible ending. It is a horror film and a young couple decides to go to the man’s childhood summerhouse one night after a wedding they attend. The couple arrives at 4:00 A.M. and soon after getting there they hear a knock on the door. Well, one thing leads to another and eventually a group of two girls and a guy stab the couple and leave them lying in the house. The next morning two high school boys come to the house to distribute some Christian literature and when they see the door left open, they decide to come in. The boys find the couple and the movie ends with the boy going to touch the dead girl and just before he does, she lets out a blood-curdling shriek. The movie then ends and we have no idea what this means. This type of ending is extremely frustrating and annoying. Thankfully however, the ending to Shutter Island was much more interesting. The ending to Shutter Island was perfectly ambiguous and open to interpretation. At the very end of the movie, Laeddis tells Chuck, “a place like this can make you wonder: live like a monster or die a good man.” It is easy to tell that the ending of this movie is so good because it led to an entire discussion in our class about what Laeddis really meant or what he wanted to imply. I personally think that when he makes this intellectual quandary he pretends to have relapsed again even though he actually remembers everything. I think he wanted to get the brain surgery to forget his terrible past—the death of his wife and kids. He knowingly pretended to have forgotten about his fantasy so that Dr. Cawley would forever take away the memory of that terrible day, and he would not have to suffer the mental torment. However, the genius of Martin Scorsese is that I can understand other people’s interpretations and I can clearly see why they came to a certain conclusion. Like Strangers, the movie sparks debate when it is over. However, the debate after Strangers was more focused on questioning who on earth decided to have that ending to what was actually a decent movie. On the other hand, Shutter Island sparked an interesting and intellectual conversation where people could enlighten their peers with their own analysis and reasoning. I love the debates that we are able to have in English class. I think that we are now reaping the benefits of having so many during last year and this year. At first everyone was a little nervous about the debates, then it turned into a vicious circle of hate where people just wanted to earn their points, but now I think it is truly an intellectual conversation. Because of the practice we have put in, people are not afraid to share their own unique perspective and now the debates are not just filled with miscorrelating remarks made with the sole intention of earning points. English class is very interesting and I look forward to the topics of discussion each day. 

Who Am I? Homast Leondy?

The movie “Shutter Island” has disturbed me considerably thus far, especially since we stopped watching before knowing whether Teddy Daniels or Dr. Cawley is telling the truth. As of right now, I am not sure if Teddy Daniels really is mentally insane, or if Dr. Cawley recruited Teddy Daniels and is now trying to convince him that he is insane because Dr. Cawley wants to test some of his procedures on a former military man. The reason I am currently so paranoid is because it raises the question, am I really Thomas Donley? Maybe my true name is a simple anagram of Thomas Donley, my true name could be Homast Leondy. Maybe I just created this alter ego I named Thomas Donley in order to try to live like some student that I am not. It is possible that the life I am living right now is just one big hallucination. I might not be a hardworking student, I may actually be a scrub that never does his homework or never studies for tests. The more I think about it, that might not be so bad if it gets me out of this datasheet. But back to my fantasy life. Do I really have any friends? Maybe Alex Hurtuk is just my guide while I role-play this fictional story in my head. Maybe Alex is just like Chuck, and in a few short days I am going to figure out that he is actually working for Mr. Thompson. Mr. Thompson is just letting me play out this story that I have in my head because he thinks that it is the best way for me to realize that I am not in any AP classes at all. In fact, I am nowhere near smart enough to be in anything that requires so much intellectual thought. I have not actually filled out any applications for college. In reality I could not get into any colleges at all, my grades are far too low and I do not participate in any extracurricular activities at all.  Next year I am going to straight into the workforce. Maybe the dreams I have at night are real. The dreams about Alex Kreger stealing my journal that I have under lock and key in my closet and then posting them on his personal wiki leaks site. Ms. Serensky works for Mr. Thompson too. She is the one that Mr. Thompson has selected to help me understand the make believe story that I have invented in my head. She was instructed to show “Shutter Island” not because of her fondness of Leonardo DiCaprio, but because it will stimulate me to realize that I am a failure. She only wants to help me, she wants me to realize the stories that I once thought were real are actually only hallucinations. She wants me to realize that every class I have ever had with Mr. Maas is just a hallucination, just like how Teddy Daniels hallucinates about meeting Rachel. Mr. Maas is a fictional character; there is no one like him that possesses such a mastery over calculus, he is just someone I made up. I guess there is only one thing left to do…thank Ms. Serensky and Mr. Thompson. Thank you for pulling me out of my fantasy world. Unfortunately though since I do not really belong in your class, I will have to stop blogging. Well it has been fun while it lasted. Wish me luck as I now will probably be placed in a mental institution for hallucinating this elaborate lie about my own life as a teenager.

Full Body Pat Down

As I made evident in my last blog post, I traveled to New York City over the winter break. Once again, I witnessed AP English in action in the real world (yes there are many applications beyond our upstairs classroom). I am sure many of you are well aware of the recent outrages with the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) that have flooded the news and the internet during the end of 2010. Many people are upset that the TSA have been allowed to force travelers to entire full body scanners. The outrage stems from the fact that these scanners produce images of the subject’s naked body. The TSA does this because the scanner are very effective for identifying any type of weapon or illegal item that a terrorist would try to carry onto a plane. However, people argue against the TSA because they say that the imagers violate our privacy rights as United States citizens. The TSA does offer an alternative to these full body-imaging devices, but that alternative is an extensive full body pat down. This has created even more outrage than the scanners because of the breach of travelers’ privacy. Interestingly enough, when I flew out of New York City this Friday I was the passenger randomly chosen to go through the thorough security check. Normally, I would be able to just have a naked image of me produced and then I could proceed to my gate and wait for my flight. However, to my dismay, the imagers were broken that day so that meant…I had to be given a full body pat down. If they only knew how much of a patriot I am, they would not have had to waste their time on me. But I did not feel that the TSA agent would be very receptive to an attempt to evade a full body pat down. Unfortunately, the new pat downs are not the old hold your arms out while the agent slides his hand down your sleeve. The new security measures call for nearly every part of the subject’s body to be checked for a weapon or illegal item, so it takes a decent amount of time to execute a complete search. During the process I felt extremely powerless and weak while this authority figure held in his hand the power to either let me continue on to Cleveland or do who knows what. Because AP English is so pervasive, I could not help but think about our recent novel during this scarring process. I was reminded of Chief Bromden, McMurphy, and all of the other mental patients and their life under an authoritative and domineering figure. I never really felt sympathy for them while reading because I figured having no power was probably a good thing for them. However, after experiencing that five minutes (but what seemed like an eternity) of being totally and utterly powerless, I have changed my viewpoint. It was a terrible feeling to have no control over my own destiny and I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for the mental patients while living under the overbearing nurse Ratched. Before I wrap this up, let me just reassert my patriotism: even though the airport security checks are very invasive, if they stop potential terrorists from harming my beloved country, then I will willingly continue to let the department of homeland security do their job and keep America safe.

Analysis of Art

Over this very relaxing and refreshing winter break I have seen AP English’s application to the real world in countless ways, but I witnessed the class’s impact most notably on my recent trip to New York City. My family visited New York City several days after Christmas and it so happened that we arrived the day after the huge snowstorm. This snowstorm canceled thousands of flights and as a result the airlines were struggling to keep up with the crowds of people trying to make reservations and arrangements. It is because of this that Continental lost our luggage. My family stayed for three nights in New York, and Continental never delivered our bags to the hotel (it is standard procedure that airlines will deliver your bags if they lose them during your trip). So as you can probably imagine, I was frustrated that my family visited there for three nights without any of the clothes we packed. When we arrived at the airport my dad and I went right to the Continental service desk to try to understand what could possibly have happened that it would take them four days to return our luggage to us. I should explain that they simply took our bags off our initial flight because the plane did not have enough room. But then our bags came on the next flight into New York several hours later and then sat in the airport for four days and three nights. When we arrived at the service desk, I used the discussion and arguing skills that I have honed in AP English to convince Continental to let my dad and me go in their bag room and look for our suitcases. AP English taught me how to get my point across in a somewhat respectful yet stern manner and in this case, the skills were successful. After some looking around we actually did find our luggage and we took it with us back to Cleveland. AP English helped me even more when my family visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the MET, my family had a tour guide take us on a highlights tour to show us the more notable works of art. I really recommend this because for anyone who has ever visited, you know how incredibly massive the museum is. While the tour guide was talking about the pieces of art, I realized that my AP English analysis of literature correlated perfectly with the analysis of paintings. I never really realized how similar a painting is to a novel. There are the obvious similarities such as both have authors, occasions, audiences, and purposes. But additionally, both include all kinds of symbolism and hidden messages. Our extensive work with analysis helped me to look far beyond just the surface picture painted by the artist and instead look at every single object chosen and color and placement of the people. I was able to have an intelligent conversation with our tour guide even though I am not very familiar with art at all. Also, because of all of the many different larger occasions we have researched, I was able to use some of this knowledge to tie in with why the author painted certain scenes or depictions. I was truly amazed with the extent to which AP English teaches us all how to think and discuss.