Hi this is my blog for Mr.Menard's assignments and also as my private blog of my life. Here you will find essays(of course), photos of my life and my drawings. Sponsored by STARK Industry
'The Tell Tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe is a famous short horror story about a man murdering his neighbor old man because of his vulture eyes after seven days of preparation. Just as many other Edgar's horrific short stories, it used very concise sentences and different ways of inversion to create more tension and expressed the main character's conflict within himself and human's extreme fear toward death.
As I read the story I found that the genre of this story is horror, thriller and gothic fiction. According to Wikipedia, Gothic fiction is a genre that is compounded of horror and romance, having emphasis especially on terror, horror, awe and apprehension. The whole story is about murdering with irrational reason, hiding the dead body and a pain the main character gets from his conscience and by this, I thought that the writer showed human's deep and dark instinct and desire. The man trying to kill the old man because of his eyes showed human's instinctive desire which is not easily expressed because of the pressure and moral standard the society had formed. Also, in the scene where the man implied that he understood the old man's extreme fear of the death but still kept on waiting to catch the moment for his goal, I once thought again about death and our fear toward it. As the story goes on, the main character keeps on insisting that he is not insane and gives different proofs supporting his healthy mental. I felt that these part of the man insisting he is mentally okay was inserted deliberately to make the man seems more psychopathic and creepy. What the man had done to the old neighbor seems to be totally insane to normal people but the man keeps on saying with nuance that there is nothing wrong with his act and this makes the readers feel more terrified about what man is thinking. To this cruel and mentally disordered person, conscience did seemed to be existing. On the last part of the story, the man heard the heartbeat, screaming and saw many chaotic things which cannot actually happen in real life. I believe that the part where the man felt totally confused and screamed out that he is the murderer showed that this man did have a conscience at least in his unconsciousness.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorite writers and I was extremely thrilled when I first read his "The House of Usher", “The Black Cat" and "The Tell Tale Heart". His lively and tensive style of writing gives big anxiety to the readers and makes them shiver from excitement. Without any hesitation, I can strongly recommend his novel, especially "The Tell-Tale Heart" to people who wants to be thrilled and think about human's deep instinct.
Submerged London, destroyed Taj-mahal, burning opera house. Earth in 2055 is totally devastated, and one old man is left alone in the global archive, viewing video records of the Earth before and showing irrevocable mistakes human made for their own profit. 2055's tragedy is introduced as to be the result of our behavior up to 2015, insensible toward the Earth breaking down. "The Age of Stupid", a British documentary film by Franny Armstrong, awakens the viewer's lack of discretion toward the globe's environment, and gives them a strong message; seize the chance given, and save yourselves when you can.
During the movie, a man throws many questions and one of the question was 'Why did the electric car get scrapped?'. About 15 years ago, GM produced an electric car called EV1after the law making the sale of zero-emission car obligatory was passed. The car was leased and charging electricity wasn't inconvenient thanks to more than 150 electricity station in California. Consumer's reaction was well disposed but suddenly, all EV1 was withdrawn and scrapped in the middle of desert. Why would GM self-sabotage their own car? The reason is known to be sale of electric car wasn't profitable to GM and the automobile market, but there are some conspiracy theory blaming the oil industry and the US government. Oil industry, apprehensive about the decrease of internal combustion engine car's demand is censured to be related to the discard of EV1, and even the movie and song pointing this out was created (Who killed the Electric Car?, EV1(자우림)).
Better future could have arrived but contest of the hegemony destroyed the possibility for it, and profits are sacrificing human and our future which is a tragedy. One video in the movie was about a woman named Layefa, living in Nigeria's most profitable region of oil, but getting no benefit of electricity, water and others. Oil spill killed fishes and people had to wash the fish with Omo. Agriculture and environment is collapsing when few are getting selfish and richer. The upper class's selfishness and greed gave me a big shock, and a animation part in the movie attached down aroused me of the severity of status quo in the distribution of resources and think again about the upper 1% of people behavior.
Next thing that shocked me was the insensitivity of people toward the seriousness of the environmental problem. A British couple. Piers a wind-farm developer and Lisa Guy who are willing to develop and build wind turbines, appear in the movie. Their attempt to build the wind turbines was blocked by people who are positive toward stopping the global warming, but disagreeing to build the turbines because of the view. This situation can be explained by NIMBY(Not In My Backyard) phenomenon. People ARE aware of the environmental problems we face now, but doesn't seem to think that our every behaviors can be crucial to near future, so act after only thinking about the profits for right now. NIMBY is not the only problem caused by these attitudes. There is a scene in the movie where the oil factory burns the oil just because it is hard to transport and infrastructure building is so expensive. This can cause enormous harm to Earth's environment and people knows it. However, things similar to this happens every day. I think that this can be explained by Ringelmann effect. 7 billion people are living together in Earth and the sense of responsibility may fall to 1/7000000000. To solve this, I believe that diverse organizations should come up with an idea to assign and load more responsibility to every individual and make them more acute toward the problem we face so that they can care more about the environment.
ㄴoil burned in the factories (The Age of Stupid)
In the movie, an 82 years old guide working in Mont Blanc, France, appears and says that the temperature in summer is getting too high, glaciers are melting and Earth is now changing. We can often hear the announcers saying that "It was the hottest/driest/coldest summer/winter ever". It is so apparent and true that the Earth was being abused by human. Burning buildings, submerged cities and destroyed tourist attractions is not an exaggeration appearing only in movies. Abnormal climate symptoms are increasing and people must change their attitude toward the Earth. People's mind should be changed from 'It will be okay for me'(나 하나쯤이야) to 'I should start first'(나부터 먼저), and without this change, we will never be able to hand healthy and livable Earth to our descendants. For the better world for ourselves, change must exist. Abandon selfishness, and search the way to give profit for human being, not for only you. We can save ourselves now, and we will.
After two exhausting hours of driving, we arrived at our destination where hundreds of old ladies with mental and physical disabilities were waiting for us. Since I was 14, I went volunteering to sanitarium 2~3 times in a month with my family and neighbors. Our job was to give play psychotherapy, helping their daily life and provide some refreshment.
I still clearly remember my first visit to the place. My parents first took me to the sanitarium just to show me what they do every month. Most of the people living there couldn't speak and express their feeling by words and some of them were even deaf so alll the other volunteers used sign language to communicate, They also had physical disability so that they couldn't move freely alone, and everyone seemed to feel awkward about me, the stranger in their own shelter, It wasn't only their problem that made me feel awkward. I had the prejudice toward the handicapped people then. It was so hard to approach the people without hesitation because they seemed to be so different from me, and they seemed a little terrifying because of their physical problems. It was also the very first time for me to meet so many people who are different, and whom I cannot communicate with and it was approached as a big shock to me. Watching them getting play psychotherapy, I could feel how hard their life is, but how hopeful they are about their life and I felt so certain about joining the volunteering club with my parents.
Helping other people wasn't that easy, especially when the subject of the help is deaf. For the first two months, I learned how to let deaf people know about my feeling by Hangeul hand writing. My parents gave me big help while I was learning it. Even when I knew how to express some words with my hands, I couldn't understand deaf people's fast and inaccurate sign language so it took quite a long time and effort for me to have a short conversation with them. As time flew by, I became adopted to their life and got much more comfortable when facing them, and they seemed to be much more friendlier to me too. We spent really long time together by going to camp, swimming, hiking and many other outdoor activities and I felt them just as same people as me who has different personality and feelings without even realizing it. My prejudice and bias started to break down because of my precious experience in the sanitarium.
Three year has passed since I started to go on volunteering. I met group of people living in the sanitarium for more than a hundred times, and now I almost feel them as my family. They were much older than me but was a good friend, family, and teacher in the same time. They taught me how to help and consider about others' conditions and how to treat different people, how to accommodate amongst people who are so different from me, and how to look others without any bias. When someone asks me about the best choice I had made for the middle school years, I will definitely choose the time when I decided to participate in volunteering every month when I first visited the sanitarium.
Describe a custom from your country that you would like people from other countries to adopt. Explain your choice, using specific reasons and examples.
Freeway is stuck and every road turns into parking lot. Most of the television programs are talking about the nation's biggest movement; half of the country is waiting, and the other half is struggling to meet them. Stuck roads and different vehicles are easily noticed in Korea twice a year; Sulnal(New years day) and Chuseok. Every country's custom about big holidays differs a lot, and in my motherland, all the families living apart gather and reinforce the bond between the members. This custom of my country is good at educating different areas and gives big influence to families living far apart from each other. so that I have any doubt that it will also have good effects on other countries when they adopt it.
Unlike many other countries, Korean families gather in extreme big scale at least two times a year. Historically Koreans followed confucianism and had faith in buddhism. Our ancestors placed huge emphasis on etiquette and courtesy, "예“, between friends, couples, families and many different relationships based on them. Since most of our ancestors lived in form of extended-family, manners between family members were emphasized the most, and nowadays when most people are forming nuclear family, ”예“ is still thought to be very significant. Nowadays, the size of families got much smaller and Sul-nal and Chuseok almost became the only holidays when every family gathers. When everyone including elderlies and children come together, they learn about the basic manners first. Elderlies give words of blessings to children, tell them how they should use their life wisely, and other useful informations and advices. During 4 to 5 days, everyone learns at least a small thing from other members who used to live far away. Education done during holidays turns out to be so meaningful after all the family scatters to their own place.
As mentioned before, the size of families got much smaller as time fled by, because culture changed a lot too. Koreans usually emphasize "정(Jung)", feeling love and familiarity to people around them, and less than a hundred years ago, "정“ between members of extended-families were very strong. Since family members live far away from each other now, Chuseok and Sulnal became the two biggest and only holidays when whole family can meet together. Those holidays become really huge and significant because family members hadn't met each other for a long time and only had to miss each other. During the holidays people not only educate each other but also play different kind of games like 윷놀이, 화투 and so on. Few days with family members help the family's bond get much stronger based on entertaining games, gives sense of belonging as a family, and at the same time stability generated by relief amongst them.
To sum up, one of the Korea's best custom which I want to disseminate and make other countries to adopt is a huge moving and gathering of a family on special holidays because without any hesitation I can say that family's relationship develops a lot during the holidays, and we can learn so much things from families including elderlies.
