April Monthly Blog

During the month of April we continued our Monsters vs. Self unit. Of the books we read during this part of the course, I enjoyed The Stranger, by Albert Camus the most. I decided that for this monthly blog, I would expand on one of the Socratic Seminar questions from that composition.

Question number nine stated;

Argue for one of the following statements:

a) Meursault’s execution is just punishment for murdering the Arab

b) Meursault lives more in prison than while a free man

Personally, I believe that both of these statements are relatively true. Meursault brutally murdered the Arab man, at point blank range. He fired the deathly shot and then consciously fired four more. He also was able to give no real reason for his actions while on trial, he found excuses in the glint of the sun and the hot weather of the summer day. I believe that he should have been found guilty, as he himself even admitted to the crime. However, a life sentence in prison might have been more effective than execution, as Meursault would be forced to think about his actions on a regular basis. Execution did not phase Meursault dramatically, because he viewed death as simply a part of life.

While in prison, Meursault is free to his own thoughts. In solitary confinement, there is nobody around constantly to influence him. He is even able to give up smoking, which benefits his overall health, although it torments his mind during the first couple of weeks in jail. He also has many desires that only a free man could achieve, such as going swimming and sleeping with Marie. Obviously Meursault cannot do these things from his cell, and they trouble him. However, Meursault is still the same man that went into prison. He continues to feel indifferent to the crime he committed, and refuses to accept any form of religion into his life. I believe that this indifference proves that he did not grow as a person as much as others might possibly believe.

March Monthly Blog

During the month of March, our class held a discussion on the Cult of Domesticity, and how those ideals, developed in the 1800’s, still have a powerful effect on women today. I thought I would use the opportunity of my Monthly Blog to expand on some of the ideas brought up by my classmates.

  While many of the ideas brought up in class demonstrated a desire for change in the way that society treats women, there was one idea that I thought pushed women farther back. One classmate said that she had chosen not to have a boyfriend during high school, claiming that it would have negatively affected her grades and that she would have spent her time making sure she looked good for her significant other. This opinion shocked me, and I could not help but to compare this attitude to that of the characters in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. As a culture, I had hoped we had far surpassed opinions that would have been common in the time that A Doll’s House was written, back in 1879. Nora constantly felt like she needed to be the perfect girl for Torvald, and that is what I felt like this classmate was hinting at. 
Other examples that students brought up showed society progressing into a more accepting world for women. One classmate showed a Buzzfeed video about the definition of feminism. Although the video was probably directed at an audience less overall liberal than our class, I enjoyed the positive message that it displayed towards the feminism movement as a whole. Another classmate showed an advertisement made by Always. It defied the stereotype “like a girl”. I thought that it made sense for a feminine product company to put out such an ad campaign, so I decided to look more into other advertisements that sent out a similar message. I found an ad from Nike called “American Woman” that aired during the Women’s World Cup. The commercial showed strong, powerful, independent women. Coming from an athletic company such as Nike that usually caters towards males, I was glad to come across this video displaying such prominent female empowerment. I hope that our society moves onto bigger and better things for women in the upcoming years.

February Monthly Blog

Since we have continued our gender studies unit throughout the last month as well as completed the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, I decided that for this blog post I would research the struggles that women in Afghanistan are still facing in the year of 2016.

I learned that women in Afghanistan are still fighting for a place in peace talks being held by their country. These women are demanding a say in shaping the future of their nation, and are possibly quite close to getting it. In October of 2015, the national Afghanistan security council reported that they did in fact notice the continued absence of female roles in the government, and they pledged to change that situation. This is a promising situation. After reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, I really do feel for the women of Afghanistan and the hard struggles they are facing. I could never imagine living in such a restricted place myself.

Some women fear that their government will give up on this pledge for more woman's rights in an attempt to compromise with the Taliban. I hope that the Afghan government is able to hold it’s ground and successfully complete these “peace talks” while still holding woman’s rights in a high regard. Again, A Thousand Splendid Suns also opened my eyes to this issue.

This leads me to discuss one of the Socratic seminar questions that asked about how our view of the middle east changed following our reading of this book. My personal views towards the middle east always came from a generally uneducated point of view. My only view of Afghanistan and other middle eastern countries was from  major news stories whenever they were broadcast on CNN. After reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, I feel a little more educated, and a lot more intrigued. This book has made me want to look into the middle eastern culture more, as it is an interesting, culture filled, and beautiful place.

January Monthly Blog

For this blog entry, I would like to expand on one of the essential questions our class discussed for our upcoming gender studies unit.

To what extent can a culture be defined and/or understood by the positions of man and woman in the society?

This inquiry is extremely relevant in today’s world. Personally, I believe that the more freedom women have in a society, the more advanced that society is. In advanced countries such as the United States, although ultimate gender equality has not been reached, women generally have the same opportunities as men. In places that are not as far along in their ideals and technologies, women routinely have less freedom. This is proven by many middle eastern countries.

Saudi Arabia is one middle eastern country that is at the forefront of modernization. They have just held their first election where women were allowed to vote. This is roughly eighty years after the 20th Amendment was passed in the United States, guaranteeing suffrage for women. For a country that is considered to be leading the modernization of the middle east, this is an impressive statistic. Perhaps other nearby countries will follow Saudi Arabia’s example.

Iran is another setting of gender inequality in the middle east. While as a country they are technologically advanced enough to create nuclear weapons, Iran still places extreme restrictions on their woman citizens. Women are not permitted to watch male sporting events, leave the country without their husband’s permission, and face serious discrimination involving child custody, marriage, and divorce. There have been many cases where Iranian women have spoken out against this awful discrimination and found themselves in jail as a result.

Although restrictions placed on women have largely been lifted worldwide compared to previous centuries, there are many countries that still have strides to go. I believe that one can safely assume that the more rights women have in a country can reflect how advanced that society is.