CoNjOiNeD

Ryan Jones
4-6-10
Conjoined and A Valediction
Marriage always tends to be a difficult task that possesses its ups and downs. Whether it may be the beginning of a new relationship or a marriage that seems like an eternity, challenges are always something that is to be faced. In Conjoined, by Judith Minty, and A Valediction, by John Donne, love becomes an emotion that can easily be taken granite for and heavily misinterpreted.
In Conjoined, Minty brings in the metaphor of “The onion in my cupboard, a monster, actually two joined under one transparent skin:…” The shows the cruel reality of ho a relationship is and how the two partners are often able to see right through each other and they become monsters towards one another. They begin to form a bond and eventually become rather comfortable around each individual and perhaps “used to” therefore not allowing them to feel the love that they once had when they were wed from the beginning. Minty also eludes the lines “Ah, but men don’t slice onions in the kitchen, seldom see what is invisible. We cannot escape each other.” This line insist that humans as individuals are selfish and they will do whatever they need in order to get the object that they desire. We are only to see the imperfections rather than the things that make us into one perfect image as an individual ourselves. Therefore in the end, it makes it impossible for one to flee, for we are engulfed in our own wants and the love in the relationship begins to slowly deteriorate.
In A Valediction, Donne brings about the lines “Dull sublunary lovers’ love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elements it.” Love is an emotion that people often take for granite. What people do not realize is that once they give their life to someone by asking their hand in marriage, they are giving their life to someone! Nowadays, marriage is also something that people take for granite. Divorce is a common thing and people believe that it is no big deal thinking they can get married and divorced and then go through life picking spouses as if they are picking candy from a candy store. However, if someone does stay in a relationship, and it brings them trials that they have to face and the love seems to be lost, they usually realize how great their love was for that one special person as they are mourning looking over them in their grave realizing what they have just lost. Donne also says that “As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth if th’other do.” Love can also bring about its directions and misdirection’s. Some spouses are lead to do what they do not want to do, however, they feel a connection and if it is what the other wants then it can very easily be made possible. On the contrary, love can guide people to a wonderful place and can create a sense of security and belonging that everyone needs to experience in his or her life.
Love is an emotion that people have begun to toy around with and lose track of what is really means. People find it an emotion that is very easy to abuse and they are willing to take full effect on that power that society has given everyone. Love is an emotion that is often not experienced until something is lost or betrayed. In the end, love is something that should not be messed around with and it is something that should be cherished for it does not come in everyone’s life.

Jim Neilson

This article gave a lot of different insight to the book "The Things They Carried". One of the quotes that Neilson brings a great since of how the men felt about the war and when they were going into battle. For instance, "That little field," he writes, had swallowed so much. My best friend. My pride. My belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage. Still, it was hard to find any real emotion. . . . After that long night in the rain, I'd seemed to grow cold inside, all the illusions gone, all the old ambitions and hopes for myself sucked away into the mud. (210) War is a very harsh environment. A lot of people do not realize the impact it can make on someone’s life. We see war as a little thing if someone dies. However, if that was you that died, or it was someone close to you, you realize that one death can mean a lot more than just a short article in the newspaper. A life can also be something that people take for granite. Everyone thinks that they are going to live another day and so on, but in reality someone’s life can be taken away just as quick as it was given to them. This quote also talks about how “I'd seemed to grow cold inside, all the illusions gone, all the old ambitions and hopes for myself sucked away into the mud.” When someone in the war loses someone around them, their mind becomes engulfed on what is happening around them and they forget their orders and they lose track of what is going on. Suddenly they fight for one another and bleed for one another for they never know which day will be their last.

The Things They Carried

The short stories made up to what is known as, "The Things They Carried", has captured my attention more than any of the previous novels. This one actually has some historical events and tells stories from the pas, whereas all the other books we have read have a kind of "demon like" reference from my views and i cannot relate to them at all. O'Brien begins to tell different stories he tries to portray why a soldier should be teling their stories. For instance, “And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed”. “In other cases you can’t even tell a true war story. Sometimes it’s just beyond telling”. Everybody becomes so wrapped up in the adventure and how the stories can show a very positive outlook, they often can misinterpret what the author from the short story is trying to tell to his audience. The soldiers often want to persuade their readers to be happy and tell them the victories they had or the lives they have saved, however, it may be hard for them to get into depth for to the reality of war and how you witness death everyday and how you see your fellow soldiers fighting side by side dying. "If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie." This demonstrates how everyone is deceived by the war stories which we are told rather than seeing the reality of what goes on “behind enemy lines”. The end!

The Center Focus for Postmodernism

When you look atthe word “postmodernism,” if you were to decipher it in english terms it would mean anhything that is going to be in the future…since post mean after and modern means now. “…however, postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual's control. These alternatives focus on thinking of any and all action (or social struggle) as necessarily local, limited, and partial--but nonetheless effective. By discarding "grand narratives" (like the liberation of the entire working class) and focusing on specific local goals (such as improved day care centers for working mothers in your own community), postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictable, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be "think globally, act locally"--and don't worry about any grand scheme or master plan.” People tend to get start getting sidetracked by what they believe to be a metanarrative, as according to the book Postmodernism, “big stories, stories of mythic proportions—that claim to be able to account for, explain, and subordinate all lesser, little, local narratives.” These “metanarratives” tend to have someone look at the bigger picture rather than having them be able to focus on something of a smaller porportion. It should be brought about by the ideas that we all share and it brings forth a new beginning to everything that occurs. Postmodernism claims that postmodernism is “the failure of the Enlightenment.” The Enlightenment was was “a period during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when European philosophers stressed the use of reason as the best method for learning the truth.” What the philosophers did not know was that even if they were to find the truth in reasoning, it was always going to be based off of an opinion rather than something that has factual evidence. So therefore, I believe that the central perspective of what postmodernism is, is the funadamentals to life and the procedures that take place while focusing on the things that are here and now and on a smaller scale, rather than something that may actually possess some impossibilties.