My First (and only) Song Purchase

“What is your favorite type of music?”

My typical response, often accompanied by a shrug, is “Uhhh… I don’t know.”

Many find this hard to believe, but I don’t listen to music. It is not that I have anything against it, and my parents do not really care either, it’s just something that we don’t do. Whenever I initially read this assignment (write a personal narrative about the first time you bought a song), I could not think of what to write about. However, after pondering the topic for a while, I have an answer that will hopefully do.

The only significant amount of time that I have spent exposed to music is during school orchestra and at church. For as long as I can remember, the church hymns have fascinated me. They are all so catchy, and they have good meaning and morals. While some may find they can be a little over sung, such as the Christmas hymns that are used year after year, this is one of the aspects of the music that I love. I have spent many hours flipping through the United Methodist hymnal early Sunday mornings and I know where all my favorite ones are. Ever since I have been able to read music, I have recreated the songs in my head and memorized the words to numerous hymns. I have even memorized the treble clef notes of some of them and attempted to play it on the violin (the instrument I play in the school orchestra). One of these, on page 400, is Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. This song has a likable tune and the words that accompany it are melodic and comforting.

A few years ago, I received an iTunes gift card for my birthday. I searched for something to use it on, only to find that I was not familiar with any of the songs on the most purchased list or the featured list. I felt bad letting this gift go to waste, so I thought long and hard about what to do with it. I finally decided to buy a copy of this hymn. It is a little bit of a more contemporary version, but I still love its tune and message. I still have it and listen to it occasionally.

While this purchase was not exactly with my own money, it was still my conscious decision to spend the gift card on this particular song. I definitely do not regret it, and if my parents understood how to use iTunes and purchase music, I think they would be ok with my choice. This song, like most hymns, has a message that is lasting and is relevant to so many moments in life.

Comments!!

Here are the links to some of my peers’ blog posts that I commented on!

https://jumpingjellybeans123.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/obamas-state-of-the-union-address/comment-page-1/#comment-15

https://openschoolbook.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/trimalchio-in-west-egg/comment-page-1/#comment-11

https://laughingmywayoutofawkwardsituations.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/a-bright-star/comment-page-1/#comment-13

Inequalities

This week, as we finish up reading The Grapes of Wrath, we are beginning to look at the themes prevalent in the famously accurate recount of the Dust Bowl that characterized the central United States during the 1920s and drove the mass migration of farmers westward into California in search of work. One of the most prominent messages of the novel is revealed in the unlucky state of these families and their fruitless drive to obtain a reliable job. The inequalities of wealth and society are undeniable in this novel as we observe the lives of the Joad family and travel alongside them to California, during this time in which we observe them fighting with extreme poverty as they eat “fried drippings” and are composed of children who have never even seen a toilet.

In preparation for this blog post, we watched a video that more clearly and objectively explained the unequal distribution of wealth in the United States, proving the observations of the families presented in The Grapes of Wrath to be quite comparable to the truth. The video also supported many of the social and economical themes presented in The Great Gatsby, as we observed that many of the characters lived extremely extravagant lifestyles and had an overabundance of money. Despite the ideas of equality and opportunity for all that the United States of America was founded on, there are many injustices that limit the successful execution of these concepts.

The video, dominated by shocking statistics, supports the audience’s perception of the poor status of the farmers in the novel The Grapes of Wrath. When reading the book, the reader becomes familiar with the economic hardships driving the families’ migration, but the short video reveals what many readers of the novel do not want to acknowledge. The book depicts that the families are willing to work hard. They are willing to move across the nation in search of a steady income. But what the book does not reveal quite as directly is the microscopic chance that these families will pull themselves out of poverty. The video takes care of this showing that CEOs make 380 times the money an average worker makes, which would require the average worker to work an entire month to make what the CEO makes in one hour. And this is just the average worker, not a janitor or other less skilled worker. The video reiterates the extreme inequalities touched on in the novel and helped me better understand the characters’ desperate positions.

The video also enhances my understanding of the extreme wealth owned by many of the characters in The Great Gatsby. The wealth is very hard to comprehend, as it is more than many have ever seen in one person’s possession. Many of the facts presented in the video represent the wealth well and distinctly reveal the inequalities. For example, the top 1% of American citizens own 40% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 80% own a mere 7%. Fitzgerald’s message of the morality of the inequalities becomes clearer with the statistics presented in the video.

The video’s message is made more powerful with ethos, pathos, and logos. The makers use ethos when they address all perspectives on the situation. They show the relativity of socialism, compared to what Americans believe to be the ideal distribution of wealth, and to what Americans think the distribution of wealth looks like, and to what the actual distribution of wealth looks like. This acknowledgement of all views gains the respect of an audience and builds the makers credibility. The makers also utilized pathos through their choice of visuals, which depict the insurmountable differences in incomes and distributions of wealth, playing on the audience’s emotions as they are struck with the unfairness of the distribution. Furthermore, the makers use logos when presenting the shocking statistics. Statistics, which present information in a comprehendible and reliable way logically induce one to realize and loathe the inequalities.

Overall, this video helped me better understand the wealth distribution in the United States and supported and explained the perspectives of the books we have been studying.

Here is the link to the video:

Elliot’s and Fitzgerald’s Challenge

For this week’s blog post, we are supposed to read and contemplate the significance of T.S. Elliot’s “The Hollow Men.”

The poem is interesting, and at first, quite intimidating (to be honest, even after reading it like four times, it still appears quite daunting). It has a very pessimistic view on civilization and the tendencies of humans to be cowardly and ignorant. The imagery of the poem is extremely prevalent and plays a huge role in the message of the piece. I found one of the first imagery excerpts to be the most intriguing, as the narrator describes himself and his acquaintances like this:
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless”
This imagery is essential in characterizing the main roles in the poem. The described hollowness initiates the men as purposeless and timid, as they have no drive or direction for their actions. And, contradictory to what one may believe, while the men are hollow, they are also stuffed, which immediately reminds me of the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. The men’s heads, like the scarecrow’s head, are stuffed full of straw, and they seem to have no brain, accounting for their worthless lives. They are stuffed like dead animals; they are empty and floundering, contributing the monotony and futileness of their lives, further developing Elliot’s harsh views of civilization.

Furthermore, the poem was published during 1925, the same year as Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Elliot and Fitzgerald seem to express similar views on the direction of society. Both writers seem to believe that civilization and the morals of men are going off into the deep end, as no one longer seems to have any care for experiencing true success. Both pieces of literature also rely heavily on symbolism and both used eyes in their work to share a significant concept. The writers comparably use eyes to represent a source that casts judgment on their main characters. For example, in The Great Gatsby, George Wilson refers to the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleberg that are painted on the wall as the eyes of God that see everything. Similarly, Elliot writes
“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom”
He uses eyes to share the fear and intimidated feelings of the hollow men as others judge them for their meaningless lifestyle choices. Both pieces also are from the point of view of a person participating in the events, although Nick seems to be more objective than the hollow man, who harps on others’ views of them. Both poems are extremely pessimistic of human nature and the evolution of civilization and, more subtly, the American society. Overall, while hard both to understand, as well as hard to accept, this poem, along with The Great Gatsby, highlight some aspects of civilization that could use some changes. Both Elliot’s and Fitzgerald’s writing challenges their audience to recognize the flaws in our shallow society and to begin looking for a way to be more beneficially influential towards what they believe to be a quickly deteriorating society.

http://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men