Age of Mistakes (Minor Age of Ultron Spoilers)

Last week we read a piece called A Measure of Restraint by Chet Raymo.  In this piece, Raymo, a science professor, discusses the "risks that are sometimes imposed by knowledge."  In other words, he is warning scientists of the dangers of experimenting with something unknown.  That weekend, I went to see the new Avengers movie and with Raymo's story fresh in my mind, I realized that Raymo's piece directly ties to Avengers: Age of Ultron's main plot.

Since the title is "Age of Ultron," it can be inferred that Ultron will be a huge part of the movie.  Created by Tony Stark to save the world, Ultron was designed to prevent any threat the world faces.  However, Ultron has artificial intelligence so he can think on his own.  Seeing all the destruction people cause, he comes to the conclusion that the only way to save the world is to destroy it.

Tony did have good intentions, but as Thor says in the picture to the right, "this could have been avoided if [Tony] hadn't played with something [he doesn't] understand."  He was so focused on the benefits of the Ultron program that he forgot about the "potential danger" this program can bring.  The larger the benefits of a discovery the greater the danger.  If Tony had a little "self-restraint," this whole crisis would have never happened.  Of course this is a superhero movie so Ultron was defeated in the end.  But if this happened in the real world, maybe not artificial intelligence but something equally as dangerous, there is no telling what would happen.  This movie and Raymo's piece should serve as a warning to scientists that good intentions can lead to dangerous results if the consequences, as well as the benefits, of a discovery aren't considered.   

Maus Close Read

On page 125 of Art Spiegelman's first volume of Maus, Vladek is discussing what he and Anja did after they left the abandoned ghetto.  He says they "didn't have [any]where to go."  The path they are walking on is swastika so it is clear why they had nowhere to go.  This path represents that it didn't matter which why the Jews went; the Nazis would catch them anyway.  Everything in this panel is shaded except for the path to bring focus the fact that the Jews during this time had nowhere to hide.  This is illustrated in the panel because there are only a few leafless trees and two houses that could be used as a hiding place.  There is mostly barren land because the Jews hiding places were next to none at this point during the war.  Vladek says that they "walked in the direction of Sosnowiec" but they didn't know what to do once they got there because the Nazis wouldn't be too far behind them.  One wrong turn and they could end up in the smoke stacks, which is represented in the right hand corner of this panel.  The smoke stacks always had a looming presence over the Jews which is why it is shaded really dark and located in the corner.  It is far from Anja and Vladek, but it is close enough for them to worry about ending up in it.

Memories

"To attempt to represent Auschwitz in language - to reduce the degradation, death and stench to a concept - drowns out the screams...it is therefore necessary that the Holocaust remains immemorial - that it remains that which cannot be remembered - but also that which cannot be forgotten.  Thus, any art attempting to represent the Holocaust should continue to haunt us with its inability to represent the unrepresentative, to say the unsayable.  It should continue to haunt us with the feeling that there is something Other than representation."

Today in class we discussed this quote by Jim Powell.  He says that it is impossible to represent the all the horrors of the Holocaust through writing, which is true.  History textbooks, for example, only state the statistics and a synopsis of the Holocaust.  One chapter in a textbook isn't nearly enough to accurately represent this tragic event.  They choose to write about the big picture instead of specific details which "drowns of the screams."  However, it is hard for the authors of the history books to get personal stories because many of the survivors don't like to talk about everything they witnessed; it's "unsayable."  Many try to forget everything that has happened to them and the best way to do that is by not talking about.  Yet, if everyone forgets about the Holocaust, an event just like it can happen again.  History repeats itself unless the world learns from the past and prevents it from happening in the future.  It is a constant battle between remember and forgetting, but neither one ever wins.  People can forget about it for a while but eventually something will bring back the memories, such as a picture or an article.  These works of art are "haunt[ing]" because parts of it may be true, but the creators are leaving out some terrible details which is very frightening to think about.

The Reality of Photographs

This week we read a section of On Photography by Susan Sontag.  In this piece, Sontag writes that photographs are for "consumerism" and do not depict reality at all.  I agree that most photos with people smiling and posing don't represent reality, but staged photographs can reveal a truth about society.  For example, consider the image above.  The photographer obviously positioned these girls to sit and act the way they are.  Most teens aren't always on their phones when they are with their friends, but the purpose of this picture isn't to represent reality; it is to illustrate how attached teens are to their phones.  Many teenagers are relying on their phones to communicate that it is limiting their ability to be able to have conversations face to face.  Having these girls sitting next to each other on their phones without talking to each other effectively reveals this flaw in society.

Another example is this photograph to the right.  I feel that this image, although staged, represents how women feel the need to look perfect.  She seems discouraged because she has one minor imperfection.  Although this isn't a candid picture, it still has some truth to it.  I know I have felt like this at one point or another.  I do not agree that photographs are "mental pollution."  Even though most images these days are edited or staged, they don't fill people's mind with useless images.  They reveal an underlying truth that is beneficial to society.

Hair Straighteners

Over the years, the hair straightener has become more and more popular.  Women all over the world use it to get their hair perfectly straight.  God forbid there be a single curl or wave in their hair.  I don't think I have a friend who doesn't have a straightener in her home.  But why do some girls feel like having straight hair is the only way they feel confident about themselves?

I have a friend who straightens her hair almost every chance she gets.  She naturally has curly hair, but has repeatedly told me how much she hates it.  She even wants to get it permanently straightened.   Just like how David Foster Wallace is "confused" on the morality of killing lobsters, I am "confused" on her motives.  I do not understand why she wants to get rid of her naturally beautiful, curly hair for stick straight hair.  I understand why people want to straighten their hair sometimes; it's fun to chance your appearance once in a while.  But permanently changing your appearance to conform to a standard is very nonsensical.  What part of society has made it alright for women to believe they have to change themselves in order to fit in?  Women should be able to feel confident without feeling like they need to change something as simple as the way their hair looks.

The Hours

This week in class, we finished Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf and watched the movie The Hours which is based off of the book.  I thought it was very clever how they made the book apart of the movie.  They had Virginia Woolf writing it and they had Laura Brown reading it.  I really liked how they combined characters to make one character in  the movie, such as Richard and Septimus.  Richard, like Septimus, is tired of "the hours" always following him so he decides to fall out the window, freeing himself from "the hours."  Woolf based Sepitmus off herself and I can see that when she is talking to her husband, Leonard, about how she is the only one who understands her illness.  Leonard reminds me of Rezia because he wants to help Virginia get better, but he doesn't understand what she is going through so it is impossible for him to help.

Laura Brown reminded me a little bit of Miss Kilman during the movie.  She is so distant and isn't very affectionate towards her family.just like Miss Kilman is towards everyone.  The only person we see Laura Brown show fondness towards is Kitty in the same way we see Miss Kilman only loving Elizabeth.  Laura Brown is so unhappy with her family that she decides to leave and live by herself because they only thing she desires is the one thing she can't have.  At the end of the movie, Laura has the same realization that Clarissa has at the end of the novel.  The realization is that life is beautiful and that no matter how many hardships you may face, you should keep on living. 

Unexpected Friendships

      "But this young man who had killed himself - had he plunged holding his treasure?  'If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy,' she had said to herself once, coming down in white.
       Or there were the poets and thinkers.  Suppose he had had that passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage - forcing your soul, that was it - if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William had impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that?" (Woolf 185).

Although Clarissa has never met Septimus, she seems to have a great understanding of his mind and his decisions, even more than Reiza has.  Earlier in the party, Clarissa hears that Septimus was in the war which is why he suffers so much.  However, Clarissa realizes that it wasn't his illness that caused him to commit suicide, it was the doctors, like Sir William, that made his life "intolerable."  The "treasure" that Clarissa mentions is Septimus's soul.  By flinging himself out the window, Septimus saved his soul from being corrupted by the doctors' wrong solutions for his condition.  Clarissa is the only character in the novel to understand that by killing himself, Septimus saved himself.

This reminded me of an episode of Merlin where the main character, Merlin, meets a boy named Daegal and doesn't fully comprehend his motives until he dies.  This isn't an exact comparison because Clarissa and Septimus never met but it still applies because Daegal and Merlin barely know each other.  Originally, Daegal was working Morgana, the evil witch, and tricks Merlin into going far into the woods so Morgana can kill his best friend, King Arthur, without Merlin interfering.  However Daegal has a change in heart and decides to help Merlin save Arthur from Morgana.  While they were saving Arthur, Daegal was shot and died.  Merlin realized after his death that he didn't come back and help him just to be nice, he did it to prove to himself that he still has goodness in heart after everything evil he has done.  Everyone in the kingdom thinks he is just a nice guy; only Merlin knows the truth about Daegal's actions just like Clarissa is the only one who understands Septimus' decisions.

Flashbacks

"Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day.  I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought.  And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall.  There above them it hung, that moon.  She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight" (Woolf 42).

This passage represents how the past directly affects the present.  Peter Walsh just returned to London after five years of being in India and the first thing he does is visit his former love Clarissa.  He reflects back to the night he proposed to her, also the night she rejected him.  He sees the moon which they "looked at from a terrace."  His old feelings of love and "grief" are coming back to him through his flashback, proving how past events correlate with current events.

Just like Mrs. Dalloway, the TV show Arrow begins with no back story, it goes straight into the plot.  The show follows Oliver Queen, the son of a billionaire who goes missing for five years until he finally returns home, and his quest to protect his city by using his knowledge of the past to help with his current situation.  During each episode, there are two different time lines going on, one in the past and one in the present.  In order to understand the events occurring, you must understand the events that caused it to happen.

In this passage, there are also two timelines, one where Peter is in Clarissa's room and the other is the moment that Peter wishes he can forget.  But just like Oliver, he can't escape the past; the past is what shapes the present and the future.

Different

Steve in the 1940s                         Steve Today

This week, we read "Fish Cheeks," a short story by Amy Tan.  In this story, Tan discusses what it was like to grow up being Chinese in America.  She recalls being embarrassed of her culture at the time of the story, but later she realizes that she should not have tried to change herself and becomes "proud [she is] different" (Tan 95).  This reminded me of how Steve Rogers must have felt when he made the transition from the 1940s to the culture of today.

Although Amy Tan is discussing the difference between two cultures, the difference between two time periods can be viewed in the same way.  Each decade has their own slang, music, morals, technology, clothing, manners, and many more items and techniques associated with them.  If someone was to go from one time period to another, they would need to learn the culture of that period in order to fit in which is exactly what Steve Rogers had to do.  He dressed differently, thought differently, and he definitely didn't know what a cell phone was.  Just like Amy Tan and her "miniskirt in beige tweed," he thought if he looked the same on the outside he would fit in (Tan 95).  However, he will always be different.  A part of him will always be from the 1940s just like a part of Amy Tan will always be Chinese.

Charles Xavier

This week, we read a short story called "Disability" by Nancy Mairs.  In this story, Mairs reveals that the media severely hurts the disabled by failing to represent disabilities as normal.  In addition, the media's portrayal also hurts the "Temporarily Abled" because it influences people to believe that disabilities can't happen to them (Mairs 15).  However, people can become disabled "without warning, at any time" (Mairs 15).  Charles Xavier, also known as Professor X, fell victim to the media’s lack of portrayal when he gets paralyzed from the waist down.

Charles Xavier, along with the other X-Men, is a mutant.  Each one of them has a different special ability.  Charles has the ability of telepathy.  While on a mission with the X-Men in Cuba, he was accidentally shot in the back, paralyzing his legs.  He adjusted well at first, but over the years he becomes very depressed.  Charles was already an outcast of society because he is a mutant; now he is also an outcast of his own community because he is in a wheelchair.  He wants to be seen as "normal" so badly that he enlists the help of his friend to develop a serum that will allow him to walk again.  However, if he takes the serum, he will not be able to use his telepathy again.  In order to be considered "normal," he is willing to give up apart of himself that makes him truly special.  Nevertheless, he takes the serum anyway.  Finally he realizes that being true to himself is far better than conforming to society's standards.  Maybe if the media portrayed disabilities as something that "complicates but does not ruin human existence," the transition for Charles would have been easier (Mairs 15).

Walter's POV

All I want in life is to be successful.  I want to be rich.  I want to buy my wife a pearl necklace.  I want a yacht.  I want everything that comes with being rich.  This liquor store was going to be my chance to make it big.  Mama got a check for ten thousand dollars.  TEN THOUSAND!  I wanted to use it to invest in a liquor store with Willy Harris and Bobo.  We had it all planned out and the only thing that we needed was my share of the money.  But when I asked Mama, she wouldn't give it to me.  She said, "There ain't going to be no investing in no liquor stores."  And when I tried to talk to my wife about it she said, "Eat your eggs, Walter."  Nobody ever understands me.  All I want to do is make something of myself and nobody even gives me the chance. 

When the check finally came, Mama went and bought a house.  We were all fighting that day so she thought it would cheer us up.  Well it crushed me.  She took away my dream before I even got a chance to follow through with it.  There was no point of working if I didn't have anything to work for so I spent the next three days drinking at the bar.  I guess my boss called and complained because Mama showed up at the bar to take me home.  I told her how I felt and she felt bad for me so she gave me the leftover money, sixty-five hundred dollars.  She told me to go to the bank and put three thousand dollars into Beneatha's schooling and put the rest into a checking account for me.  

Instead of going to the bank, I gave all the leftover money, including Beneatha's money, to Willy Harris and Bobo for the liquor store.  If this investment worked, I could pay for Beneatha's schooling myself.  We were one big happy family for a while there.  When Mr. Lindner from the "Welcoming Committee" came over to try to buy the house from us, we declined.  There wasn't anything that was going to stop us from moving into that house.

Later that day, Bobo came over and told me that Willy Harris has run off with the money.  I was devastated.  I finally had the chance to achieve my dream and Willy Harris crushed it.  Our family also needed that money.  I knew I made a huge mistake so I tried to make it right by calling Mr. Lindner and accepting the money for the house.  Once he came over however, I knew I couldn't accept his offer.  If we gave in to the white oppression then how will the black equality movement ever move forward?  Money is still important, but sticking up for your family and yourself matters a lot more.

A Not So Perfect Fairy Tale

"The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," by F. Scott Fitzgerald, has every aspect that is attributed to a "Once upon a time" fairy tale: a handsome prince, a beautiful princess, and a gigantic castle located in a scenic area.  However, the story is missing a "happily ever after."  In fact, it has the complete opposite of a happy ending; but that is the point.  Fitzgerald's theme is to show that material possessions do not measure how happy a person is.  He achieves this theme through the use of rhetoric such as the symbol of the diamond.  The gigantic diamond represents the wealth of the Washington's which is also the source of their happiness.  A diamond that large would have no value because "there would not be enough gold in the world to buy a tenth part of it" (87).  Since the diamond is not worth anything, no happiness can come from it.  Although the idea of a diamond mountain is as ridiculous as pink elephants, the story's theme can still be applied to today's world.  When I walk into the school lunchroom, I see almost everyone on his or her phone.  When people forget their phones, I hear them say that they feel empty and sad.  People need to realize that material possessions, such as phones, can't make them feel truly happy.  John T. Unger also fails to realize this.  Although he saves Kismine and Jasmine from the airplane attack much like Moses saved many people by parting the Red Sea, he cannot truly be called a hero because his view on happiness never changed.  He is unsuccessful in realizing that true happiness comes from the relationships people make and the experiences you share with those people, not from luxurious items. 

The American Nightmare - EC

Question: Is there a dark side to American success?

I believe that there is a dark side to the American Dream.  The American Dream is that someone can start out poor, work really hard, and then become really rich and successful.  This is really hard to achieve; but if someone manages to, it never is what they expect it be like.  A good example of this is Jay Gatsby.

Before Gatsby became rich, he was James Gatz.  The son of unsuccessful farmers, he always dreamed he should be rich.  He even said that "his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents" (Fitzgerald 104).  He was determined to become wealthy, no matter what the cost. Since he couldn't become rich legally, he became rich illegally.  He expected that once he was wealthy, everything would fall into place.  Daisy would be his and everything would be perfect.  However, this is not the case.  Daisy is married to another man, but this doesn't stop Gatsby.  He is prepared to do whatever is necessary to make her his "and to this conception he was faithful to the end" (Fitzgerald 104).  But Daisy doesn't feel the same way, thereby crushing Gatsby's dream; she states, "'Oh you want too much!'" (Fitzgerald 134).  Until the day he died, he never gave up on his dream.  He truly was ""faithful to the end" (Fitzgerald 104).  Gatsby did achieve the American Dream, but it didn't turn out to be everything he expected it to be.  

Realizing Reality

This week, we read a speech given by David Foster Wallace to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005.  In this speech, he talked about how "the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about."  This reminded me of Tony Stark because he couldn't see that his weapons caused more harm than good until he experienced it himself. 

Before Tony Stark became Iron Man, he was the CEO of Stark Industries, a weapons company.  He designed and created weapons for the U.S. military but his weapons were sold to other countries as well.  Tony only wanted his weapons to be sold to the United States, but he was too involved in his "lens of self" to realize what was going on.  All he cared about was making money and partying.  He was too distracted by his own needs that he never paid attention to what was going on "right in front of [him]."

That all changed when he was kidnapped in Afghanistan after he gave a weapon demonstration to the U.S. soldiers.  While he was there, he realized that the same weapons he created to protect innocent people were also the ones the terrorists were using to hurt them.  He escaped the cave he was held in by creating the iron man suit.  After that, he improved his suit and started using it help people because he finally realized that he is not the "center of the world." The world was suffering because he was being "self-centered" and he wanted to put an end to it.  Tony started to "experience" events in a new way, which is all David Foster Wallace asked for.

The Necessity of Punctuation Rules

Set rules of punctuation allow writers to express their feelings and tone in their work, much like pauses and changes in pitch do when speaking.  Looking at the photo above, Snoopy's feelings are clear because the punctuation rules state that question marks show confusion and exclamation points can show anger or shock.  If these rules changed, the meaning of this cartoon would be misinterpreted and the feelings the artist originally wanted to convey would be lost.  In "Notes on Punctuation", a colon is said to "give you the feeling of being ordered around" and exclamation points are "irritating" (Source D).  These connotations that are linked to the punctuation reveal the many ways that they can express an author's feelings and create tone.  Elizabeth Austen in "On Punctuation" uses flowery language in poem to express her emotions because she didn't use any punctuation in it.  It is a waste of time for an author to use more adjectives than needed to convey tone when a simple piece of punctuation would suffice.  Ben Dolnick in "Semicolons: A Love Story" hated semicolons but then discovered that "no other piece of punctuation...captures the way in which our thoughts are both liquid and solid, wave and particle" (Source E).  He realized that no other piece of punctuation conveys the same meaning as a semicolon.  Each piece of punctuation has its own feeling associated with it.  By changing the rules, it would lead to the misinterpretation of tone and the emotions the author originally wanted to convey would be gone.

The Power of Society

"You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source.  Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction.  It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.  The master had said, 'You are ugly people.'  They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance.  'Yes,' they had said.  'You are right.'" (Morrison 39).

This passage, I believe, is the most important passage in The Bluest Eye because it explains why the Breedloves are ugly.  They are not physically ugly, but since they believe they are, people consider them ugly.  The "all-knowing master" who has given them the "cloak of ugliness" represents how white society has created this beauty standard that is impossible to live up to.  The movies, magazines, and all other sources of entertainment depicted only whites, creating a standard that you had to be white in order to be beautiful.  Since the Breedloves could not find anything to contradict this statement, they believed it to be a fact.  


A similar situation happened in The Avengers to Bruce Banner, otherwise known as the Hulk.  When Banner's heart rate gets too high, he turns into the Hulk.  When he is the Hulk, he doesn't have control over himself and can cause a lot of damage.  Because of this, society views the Hulk as a bad thing that needs to be contained.  This causes Banner to hate the Hulk side of him and to wish it wasn't there.  The Hulk is not a bad thing, he ends up saving the day at the end of the movie; but since society deems him as terrible, he ends up believing it just like the Breedloves did.  Tony Stark, however, does not view the Hulk as a terrible monster.  He, in fact, views him as an asset.  When Tony compliments him on being the Hulk, Banner accepts the compliment very lightly because he doesn't believe it.  Tony manages to convince Banner by the end of the movie that the Hulk might actually be a good thing.  That is the difference between Banner and the Breedloves, Banner had someone to convince him that society is wrong to make him believe that the Hulk is a bad thing.  Maybe if the Breedloves had their own Tony Stark, things would have ended differently.

Skinny Steve

This week, we read a few chapters in The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison.  The whole book is about how women's beauty standards affect women but while I was reading it, I started thinking about the societal standards for men.  In doing so, I realized that those standards had a huge impact on Steve Roger's (Captain America) life.

Back before Captain America was Captain America, he was a short, unusually skinny man from Brooklyn, New York.  Before the procedure, girls ignored him.  After the procedure, girls loved him.  Everything stayed the same except one thing, his body.  In order for a man to be considered handsome in society, they have to be tall and muscular.  Steve Rogers is the total opposite of this standard so it is no surprise that he is having trouble finding a girl.  

In the picture to the left, it is clear that this women really likes Steve.  However, if he had walked into that room before the procedure, the women would have totally ignored him.  Even though this movie takes place in the 1940s, this standard still exists today.  There aren't very many movies where the main character is a short, skinny man or a man that is on the heavier side.  Also, there aren't really any magazines with pictures of men that aren't tall, muscular, and tan.  It is sad that society cares more about someone's physical appearance than their personality.

The Seed of Hope

This week in class we read two prologues from The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison.  In the second prologue, it explains the important details of the story so the readers can focus of the novel and not on their emotions.  The second prologue also talks about hope which reminded me of how Captain America is the "seed" of hope when an evil organization with intentions of taking over the world, HYDRA, plans to take over SHIELD.

When HYDRA is about to take over SHIELD, everything is in chaos.  HYDRA is about to win and all the SHIELD agents have lost all hope.  When everything looks grim, Captain America comes along and delivers a really inspiring speech that gives the agents confidence that they have a chance of defeating HYDRA.

The two sisters in the prologue have also lost all hope, except no one is there to bring that hope back.  The word "seed" in this passage represents hope. They said they searched everywhere but the seeds "did not sprout."  After a while, they came to a conclusion that it was not the seeds fault that they didn't grow, but the Earth's.  They believed that no matter how much hope for change they have, it will never grow because society is unwilling to accept it.

I don't believe that is true.  No one has really stood up to the societal standard of beauty so it is unfair to say that society won't accept this change.  One of the sisters even says that "if we planted the seeds, and said the right words over them, they would blossom, and everything would be all right."  This is exactly what Captain America did during the HYDRA attack and this is exactly what we as a society need to do in order to make a change in the way we see beauty. 

Spider-Man

This weekend, we read a piece by Toni Morrison called "[This Amazing, Troubling Book]".  In this piece, Morrison analyzes Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through her perspective.  We read Huck Finn over the summer; however, after revisiting this novel through Morrison's piece, I have discovered many similarities between Spider-Man and Huck Finn.

First, they both have a fatherly figure other than their actual dad.  For Huck it is Jim and for Peter (Spider-Man) it is his Uncle Ben.  It is because of their fatherly figures that both Huck and Peter become the heroes we know and love.  Because Jim is captured and is brought back into slavery, Huck finally overcomes all his doubts and sets a moral code for himself which leads him to rescuing Jim.  Since Peter indirectly caused his uncle's death by not stopping the thief who then goes on and kills Uncle Ben, Peter decides that he will only use his powers for good and not for selfish reasons.

Second, even though society puts all this peer pressure on them to change or to stop doing what they are doing, they always follow their conscience because they know what they are doing is right.  Everything in Huck's society has influenced him to believe that he should return Jim to slavery; but, in his heart, he knows slavery is wrong and will do anything to keep his friend and fatherly figure out of slavery.  In Spider-Man's society, everyone thinks he is a menace.  They think he should stop terrorizing the city, even though he is actually trying to help.  This doesn't faze Spider-Man, however, because he knows what he is doing is for the greater good and intends to protect New York and everyone in it.

The X-Men and Hester

This week, we finished reading The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  In the novel, Hester has committed adultery and is forever labeled as an outcast in her society.  This particular aspect of the book reminded me of how the X-Men are also outcasts in their society.

Since Hester isn't accepted in her society, she lives in a cottage in the woods.  Similarly, the X-Men live in a secluded house under the name of "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters" so no one will know that mutants live there.  In the beginning of the book, Hester spends most of her time helping the less fortunate; however, this doesn't change the views of society towards her.  The X-Men are a superhero group whose goal is to protect the citizens of their city. Yet despite all their efforts, the people still view them as dangerous outcasts.  Over time, people start to view the X-Men as heroes just like the citizens in Hester's town start to view the scarlet "A" as "able" instead of adulterer; but they can never escape the fact that they are outcasts.  

Under all the similarities between Hester and the X-Men is one difference; Hester defies the stereotype that men are stronger than women while the X-Men embrace it.  Hester, a woman, is portrayed as being very strong while Dimmesdale, the partner in her sin and a man, is portrayed as very weak.  He even goes to Hester for support because he can't handle all the guilt as well as Hester can.  On the other hand, the X-Men support this stereotype because even though there are woman in the team, they still call themselves the X-Men.  They want to seem strong, so they do this by using the word "men" and not "group" or "people".  Even though they differ in this stereotype, Hester and the X-Men's lives are very similar.