Belong

I do not belong anywhere. I do not necessarily not belong, but there is no place or group of people where I feel like I belong. I am Swiss but I live in the USA. I in no way consider myself to be American but while I may refer to myself as Swiss, I don't feel like a belong in Switzerland either, having lived in American for 11 years. I don't belong in any specific school, to me Carmel would be no worse that University, in fact, I'm going to Carmel next year. There is no group of people to which I belong to. I have friends and I like them a lot, but I don't feel like I belong with them. It is difficult to explain, I do not not belong, and being with them is the closest feeling to belonging I have. I am close with many of them, but I feel no sense of belonging. The same applies to my family, I love them dearly, I would gladly die for them, but I feel no sense of belonging. Whenever I see those family movies, with the bonding between father or son, or brother or sister, or daughter or mother, all I can do is wonder if such strong bonds between family can possibly exist. They are my family, and once again with them its the closest I can come to belonging, but I do not belong. While other people have shaped my views on life, and how I am, No person or place other than myself is part of my identity. I am me because of myself.
There is nothing sad about not belonging. There is nothing bad about it. I can experience love, friendship, hate, and everything else that comes with living and dying. I'll just be a perpetual outsider. This has many advantages, first off I can't tell the difference between belonging and not belonging, so I can't answer. Second, I have little trouble leaving places, but have little reason do so. It always makes me laugh when someone says how much they want to leave a place, because you can tell that they afraid that they wont leave, and most times they don't. I know I'm going to leave, I just have no idea where I'll end up. If you don't belong anywhere you can go anywhere you want.

Favorite character

Its hard to pick a favorite out of such a lovable cast of characters. There is Lennie, the mentally handicapped, George, the cautious worker taking care of Lennie to make up for the time he almost drowned him as a joke, Curly, the overcompensating short guy, Carson, the cold but a bit dumb guy who sees nothing wrong with shooting dogs or people, and various other unsavory people. So from this motley bunch, I have to pick Crooks. Any and all bitterness or anger he has is justified by the fact that he used to have a good life, his father owned a farm and now he's reduced to living in a single room on a ranch, and he's not even allowed into some areas, thanks to the egregious racism of the others, further justifying his anger. Despite the obstacles against (being black in the great depression) he's managed to establish a somewhat stable method of living in a highly unstable atmosphere. But the best thing about his is that he's a realist, he's realizes that most dreams fail, and he was right about George and Lennie's dream. Out of everyone in the story, he was the only who really didn't lost anything, Curley's going to miss his wife, though he doesn't realize it, Carson has already lost everything, not even being able to understand the concept of friendship, Lennie's dead, Slim feels bad for George, and George lost his friend. Crooks lost nothing and now he has companions in his loneliness.

A dream deffered

Why do dreams fail? Or better why do dreams not fail? A dream is simply a desire that a person has had for a long period of time, and wants dearly. It is no different than any other wish or desire, except that it's a bit stronger than most and the person has had it a bit longer. Also in most cases when something is referred to as a dream, it is highly unlikely to ever happen. The person who has the dream has most likely accepted that it will probably never happen, but it would be nice if it would. Let's take for example Lennie and George's dream of having a farm. Sure they knew where there was land but until they met Candy there was no hope for it financially. George realized that it was a dream and would almost definitely never happen. A dream is something you want but put little or no effort into accomplishing becuase its so unlikely. When you actually try to accomplish something, it becomes a goal. The moment something is labeled as a dream, it is doomed to not being fullfilled.

Belonging

We all belong somewhere. We might simply not be there or not see it. The strident atheist might be happier in the ranks of the church. The hate filled conservative pundit might be better off helping the poor and protesting against damage to environment with a progressive organization. Where you live might be the wrong place for you, and maybe a change is necessary. We all need one place where we fit in, and are accepted. But there is no single place in which you belong. You might be perfectly fine where you are, there is no defining sense of belonging. There are simply place and people who when you are there or with them, your happy. If your happy where your or you hang out with, good for you, if not change. It's up to you, if it doesn't work, its good to have something to fall back on, so don't burn any bridges.

Friendship

What does friendship truly mean? The word is tossed around a lot but there does not seem to be any precise definition for it. Yet we all have people that we consider friends. So while it seems that everyone views it somewhat differently and may not be able to explain the way the view it, we each have a definition for it whether we can express it or not. For the novel, of Mice and Men, at least from what I have read, it has a pretty clear definition. A friend is someone who cares for you and cares about you, such as Lennie to George and vice versa. A friendship is not necessarily an equal trade off, but as long there as there is an underlying caring for each other, it works. We friends because we need someone to care for us and to care for someone. This is a pretty nice definition and I do think that this is one way to define friendship. For me though friendship is just when you enjoy being that person. Naturally we really dont like other people. We view them as competition, not as friends. We don't neccesarily hate but we definetely dont like them. So friendship is when we manage to overlook the fact that the other person is competition to us and just accept them because we like them. We enjoying being with them so we do. We have friends because without human contanct we would go insane, and we are social animals, so we might as well enjoy being with whomever we have contact with.

The greatest crime

Murder is a unique crime. While things like rape and torture are equal if not worse, they affect you in your life. Murder is the ending of life. Victims of rape and torture are still alive, they can be helped. Murder takes on a whole different dimension, after it is committed nothing can be done. Rightly so it is considered one of the worst crimes possible. Then why is that we use it as a punishment? How can we justify destroying another human being? This sets a case of do as I say not as I do. If that the government says that some murder is justified, well whats to stop some crazed vigilante into taking the law into his own hands? To them the murder is justified. What makes them any different than the government? What American's don't realize is that in the vast majority of the civilized world, the death penalty is illegal, and murder of any kind is considered a crime. The death penalty is wrong, it does not discourage violent crimes and may even encourage them. There is no way to justify it's, wrong, does not save money as some of its advocates argue and in the case of Troy Davis, can results in innocent men being put on death row.

50%

I have always had problems with reading Shakespeare. First off there's the fact I really don't understand the language, I get the basic gist of whats going on, and I'm never confused but it makes it really hard to relate with the characters and notice any development, which makes them come off as simple and two-dimensional. Whenever class is stopped to explain how a particular passage was considered witty by Elizabethan standards, which is necessary, it ruins the entire flow of the story. Shakespeare's play on words is quite clever, but the majority of them use concepts and words that are hideously out of date. Also I cannot help but think that if Shakespeare was alive in this day and age, he would be writing jokes for Popsicle sticks. My biggest issue is that no one realizes that his plays were meant to be performed, not read, and that to do so just ruins the whole thing. So please, for the love of whatever deity there is, all you English teachers out there, stop making people Shakespeare. It's a waste of time, just take the students to see an actual play or show them one of the movies. That being said, I already know the story, and the ending is no surprise, the flow of the story is utterly destroyed by the overly complex language. On a positive note, I really like Mercutio and enjoyed his speech about queen mab, he is one of the few acctually clever characters. But even he is uncomplex.