harry potter

I was watching Prisoner of Azkaban on ABC family Harry Potter weekend last night. The quote below reminded me of our discussions on time travel in Kindred, so I thought it would be fun to share.

Harry: It was me who conjured the patronus. I knew I could do it because I had already done it! Does that make any sense?

Hermoine: No!

I'm Hungry and I Know It

On Wednesday night I went bowling with a club/mentor group that I’m in. Through that trip I have noticed how manipulated I was into feeling hungrier than I probably actually was. Through a combination of advertisements, placement of buildings, and even just friends, I felt as if I was being manipulated to feel more of my hunger.

To start, we were leaving campus around 6PM, which is a half hour later than when I usually have dinner. There had been a slight pressure to join my friends before bowling. I resisted because I knew there was food at the bowling place we were going, but that didn’t stop me from feeling slightly hungry. As such, I was hungry for a while.

When the Jitney finally came to get us, I was decently hungry. It was there enough to be a slight annoyance, but it was also easy enough to ignore. I spent most of the ride looking out of the window. Most of what we passed at first was rural landscape, so it was easy enough to ignore the hunger. That was, of course, before we hit the urban district. Specifically, the areas with shopping and restaurants. There were suddenly a lot of places advertising for their food. Of course, seeing all of these advertisements reminded me that I was hungry. What was worse was that they seemed to be taunting the fact that I had not eaten right in my face. It did not feel pleasant at all.

Agonizing minutes later, we arrived. The parking lot was a decent size, and had a chunk carved out for another business to exist in. It was McDonalds, the smell of the greasy food that I have sworn off of (except on the occasion where it’s the only option) filling the air. I was getting really hungry by that point.

We proceeded to go inside. Right next to the doorway was the restaurant part. Pizza and pretzels could easily be seen in the glass casings on the counter. The soda machine was also quite visible. (I was really starting to hate the world at this point, if you can’t guess it already.)

We got the bowling shoes and were directed to the lanes towards the end. That where the vending machines are. Above the pins of each lane is part of a long advertisement of not being thirsty and hungry while bowling by depicting food. And everyone there had some sort of food. I felt like I was on the very beginning stages of starving.

We did get food a few minutes into each of our games. I ate more pieces of pizza than usual. (Felt like such a glutton too, thank you very much.)

There is a lot to be said about the pressures of society for making people hungry. For starter, advertisements about food are everywhere. The advertisements create the image of people who are happy because they are eating certain types of food. The foods are usually recognized by our taste buds as something yummy. It’s also said that you will eat more when you’re surrounded by people. (I believe the term that they use in psychology is “social eating” but don’t quote me on that.)

Routine also seemed to be a factor for my hunger. I had eaten later because I had known I was going to be fed at bowling. That doesn’t stop the body from predicting that you’ll eat at your usual time.

It’s hard not to want to eat something when all of these factors pile up against you. But even if only some of them were present, you could feel the pressure placed on you to grab something to eat. It’s somehow a part of our culture to get something to eat, even if you’re barely hungry. The food taste good. The people eating them in advertisements look happy. Don’t we all want to be happy?

The Devil Wears Prada-Cerulean Sweater Scene

Too many choices

Many of the blogs this week have been about choice and how limiting our choices really are. However, on the opposite extreme, when presented with too many options, then each individual decision begins to lose its value. This week in my sociology class, Self in Society, we are discussing the internet and reading “On the Internet” by sociologist Hubert Dreyfuss. One of the points that Dreyfuss makes is that people have become “anonymous spectators” due to the enormous amount of information available on the internet. There is no personal engagement online, so people can freely enter and exit websites without consequence. This is most prominently shown by the popular site StumbleUpon in which every time you click stumble you go to a new site. Within the span of an hour one could stumble upon over a hundred different sites without staying fixed on any one. Although these sites may show you things you never knew before, most of the information you learn will not stick with you. In other words, this anonymity and plethora of information is good for experimentation, but it holds no true personal value and thus detracts from passion in interests. So, for StumbleUpon, each additional site that you stumble upon devalues from the previous ones you visited and you usually do not stay on one site for more than 5 minutes nor ever return to a site that you liked. In the book, Dreyfus writes that the internet has created a “postmodern self-a self that has no defining content or continuity but its constantly taking on new roles,” (81). For example, I could go online and sign up for 20 different charity causes, but then never further participate. Therefore, the internet has allowed me to learn that these charities exist, but they do not hold any personal value to me.

This post in conjunction with others begs the question: What is the optimal amount of choices? Is it good that certain decisions we make are largely influenced by society so that the totally free choices we have (if any) have more value to us and we consider more deeply? Choosing classes next semester was relatively easy because there are certain classes I have to take for my major/minor, so it took me less than an hour to decide what I am going to register for. But, for study abroad I am able to travel to any of the three places I am strongly considering. So, the decision has already taken up more time and still requires more. As a result, I may appreciate my decision for study abroad more so than for classes and it may reflect my values and my identity more accurately.

Can you afford to make that choice? (Not another college experience anecdote!)

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/

Where do you stand?

Sometimes, we are not free to choose, because choice does not come free.

I am the first in my family to be a second generation immigrant.

_ _ _ _ _

My mothers' side of the family immigrated from a village in the Zhoushan prefecture to New York City in 1979. My grandfather worked in a Chinese restaurant, and my grandmother labored as a seamstress in a garment factory. They both worked long hours for low wages to provide for their three children. Unable to speak English and with a limited academic background, they had few options.

At the age of fifteen, my mother learned English for the first time while attending a public high school (with no ESL program, no translator), and had to be a mother to her siblings. She had no choice but to support her family in the ways that she could.

My mother chose to attend college, and she did it against my grandmother's will. My grandmother wanted my mother to join her in the factory so that she could contribute financially to their family; however, my mother believed that investing in education would provide better life opportunities, particularly, making socio-economic advancements. To pay for college, she had no choice but to work two full time jobs while being a full time student. That choice resulted in her pursuing her masters to be a guidance counselor (once again, through her own . After working for more than twenty years as one, carefully saving, and making investments, she now makes enough for her to be fit the part of the "upper-middle class."

When it was time for me to apply for college, I constantly thought of how fortunate I was to have my mother's undivided support for me to go to college and pursue my interests. I received a strong public school education and was had been raised in an environment where learning was encouraged and I did not have to worry about living necessities, of whether we would be able to pay the rent or have food on the table, worries that my mother had when growing up. Yet, when it came to looking at the cost of attending private liberal arts colleges like Hamilton, I was appalled by the costs. My mother ensured me that we could afford a college education, but she couldn't say the same for one that costed over half of what she made. But she still encouraged me to apply to whichever schools I liked and that we would work details out later. But in applying, the fees quickly accumulated. Visiting colleges costed money. Applying costed money. Sending in test scores costed money. Whereas some of my friends who could apply for waivers maximized their opportunities (perhaps, one of the only times being poorer was better) by retaking the standardized tests as often as needed and sending their applications to as many schools as they wanted, I felt increasingly confined every time I had to ask my mother for her credit card or for a check.

But what stunned me was that my mother's efforts in having a well-paying job only resulted in me being unable to apply for many scholarships. As if this weren't insulting enough, I then realized that I wasn't applicable to other scholarships that required grades to be lower, not higher, than a B. Now, my efforts to have excellent grades for naught. Even worse, I was being told over and over again that "Asian's not really a minority. Don't play the race card." Excuse me? I spent nearly my entire life in Chinatown, experienced prejudice (from both Chinese and Americans), and my family had endured years of working endlessly as citizens in a society that perceived them as "others." Suddenly, my opportunities seemed simultaneously limitless and limited.

When I chose to apply early decision for Hamilton, I thought I was making an independent choice based on who "I" was, on what "I" wanted. It took me one overnight to be swayed by the warm welcome (which I now know is just a show to attract students). But after being here, I realized that the choice I made reflected well upon my family's time here in the U.S. My acceptance to Hamilton signified that we were inching closer to the ideals of what constituted "upper-middle class," an all-American-esque positive immigrant story in itself.

My mother set high standards for me to meet or surpass.

In turn, I set another for my younger cousins and brother.

The choices I "make" take in account both past and present. They represent three generations of my family and their immigrant experience while also representing how my identity is entangled in theirs.

My choices are not entirely mine. I am an extension of their existence. I carry their dreams and successes, their failures and sacrifices, and it seems to me that choice is a privilege as much as it is a burden.

Choose Your Own Life

Do we really have the ability to get where we want to be in life through hard work determination and making the right choices? It obviously has been done before in the history of our country, but how much choice do we have and how much does this choice actually help determine our outcome? It is obvious that not everyone is born into similar positions. Some may have to work harder then others to truly get to where they want to be in life. So even though we believe that we are constantly making decisions, are we? I think that it only seems like we make choices when really we are just so conditioned by our society that we act and make certain decisions sub-consciously because of our surroundings. So based on what kind of society that we are born into, we are placed on certain tracks where choice only occurs every once in a while.

This is actually very similar to the House of Horror and the rest of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. The books main storyline is similar to the "track" that our society puts us on from the beginning of our life. Only after reading for a while do you actually come to a point in the book where you are able to make a choice, just like how there are times our society allows us to choose which path we want to take. Those who are able to resist social pressures who rise and allow themselves to make it to the right ending.

Woes of a Health Nut

So I'm not-so-secretly a bit of a health nut. It's a feeling that comes in fits and starts, not enough to have me begrudging myself a warm bowl of macaroni and cheese on a snowy winter evening, but certainly enough to give at least a passing glance to most of the food labels that come into my hands.

Here's one thing I've learned: The food industry is a dirty low-down cheater.

For sure, it isn't that hard to manipulate people in such an addictive market, when a little extra salt and a little extra fat literally makes the brain malfunction in how it handles the desire to eat. But there are laws that are supposed to at least force companies to give the reasonable part of your cognition correct information, right?

Well... depends on how closely you look at it. I, an addict to salted almonds, have to admit that the labels are laughably manipulative. The calories, they say, are 170. Not too bad, right? But wait, that's per serving. There are seven servings in a bag. Um, yeah.

People can walk into a snack store and walk out with a little bag that's worth more than half of what they should eat in an entire day.

That's not even getting into other types of food labeling, either. The labels low-fat, low-sugar, and other such things are often ambiguous and mean pretty much nothing. Furthermore, you can say totally true things and imply totally false things with the ads that you put on a box of food. One XKCD comic parodies this by showing a picture of a box of cereal with the phrase "ASBESTOS-FREE!" in blazing letters on it. Such is true, but so is every other cereal on the planet (we hope).

The problem with food is that the people who label and advertise know where the gaps in perception and nutritional literacy are in a population. There are a lot of people who don't care about calories or vitamins or minerals and just eat what they want to eat, and more power to them, although even what you're in the mood for can be manipulated (as I'll come to with my final anecdote). However, parents who may want to choose a healthy snack for their kids or college students who want to stop feelings of sluggishness that occur from poor nutrition may only look at the food label or the advertisement long enough to get one good face-full of manipulation. To know which label of "ARSENIC-FREE!" actually is the novelty it claims to be, or whether or not something is really "Low-fat", or to realize that your glorious bag of salted almonds is actually 1,190 calories, requires a familiarity with both the food and the system that most people probably don't really have.

Now, for the promised final anecdote: I had an acquaintance from high school whose family started a major food chain. She talked to me once about how she had seen people photograph the foods for advertisements before, and since things like a tomato might get gross underneath all of the bright lights that they use over the long period of time that they need, there's a good deal of the time when the fruit you see in an advertisement is plastic with some water spritzed on it. Yum yum, right?

I like laughing to myself whenever I notice one of these little manipulations, even though I know that for every one I notice there are probably two that end up directing my daily life. It's tricky to maintain a good sense of what's going on in a market where people experience such disconnect from where the foods they want are coming from. Even for a health nut like myself, it's definitely one of those things where you win some and you lose some.

But at least as a health nut your friends can seem to find endless amusement trying to talk you into eating another piece of chocolate pie. I do what I can.

So what we get drunk?

When coming to college, you are confronted with a lot of choices; many times, the choice of what to do on the weekend conflicts with moral and legal matters.

Interestingly enough, what I have observe while being at college is almost a reverse in what you would expect in a "real world" situation: Doing something illegal and questionably immoral (such as drinking under age or doing an illegal drug) is pressured by your friends, and in some cases, your family expectations. In addition, many students do think about or are not influnced by the legal and academic consequences of participating from in these actions.

The choice whether to drink or not to drink can be a difficult decision for a student; as a college student, you are almost expected to drink, regardless of your age. Sometimes, when choosing not to participate in underage drinking, other friends will look down on you and think that you are not a fun person. In this instance, for choosing the more legal and moral path, you are being ridiculed. When choosing to drink, there are small pressures that do not match the "social" ramifications. There is a chance that you will be caught doing "said" illegal action by a Resident Advisor or a Campus Safety officer; this may lead in disciplinary points. In addition, you may make poor decisions after drinking alcohol and may even endanger yourself. However, these consequences may prove to have little influence, and it's the social pressure from friends that are the driving action behind many illegal actions.

Choosing a College

When I began to look at colleges, my parents told me not to worry about the price (at least not at first) and tried not to push me toward one college or another. I appreciated the freedom I had (or thought I had), but was overwhelmed by the number of colleges I had to choose from. How did I narrow down the field? Were these purely decisions that originated with me? As I look back, I am surprised by how much “help” I received.

I started looking closer to home when my mother expressed how difficult travel would be to and from say California or Scotland. I started focusing on liberal arts schools when I was told how great it was to have an open curriculum and small class sizes. Even Hamilton was a suggestion from a friend who thought I might like it. Then there was my family’s academic history: Columbia, Brown, the University of Chicago, Middlebury, Vassar, and three at Harvard. Despite my parents’ best efforts to convince me that it did not matter where other people in my family attended, I could not keep them out of my head.

The most influential external force in my decision was probably the college ranking system. I wanted to go to a college that society deemed academically excellent. I cannot say that this was purely because I wanted the best education possible. I also wanted a school with a good reputation to feel I had proved myself in my society.

I would not say that these factors had a negative effect on my decision overall. I mean, I am certainly happy with where I ended up! Societal pressures are not necessarily bad. They helped me narrow my options and caused me to apply to some very good schools. However, is interesting to think about where I would have ended up had I not been guided in these ways. I think that when I am looking at graduate schools I will make sure to look at myself and my own ideas about what makes a good school before turning to the graduate school rankings.

Open Curriculum?

With registration for the spring semester upon us, it seems that “choices” have been a dominant topic of conversation. Hamilton is known for its open curriculum, and for providing students the opportunity for a broad, liberal arts education. So, theoretically, we should be able to choose to take any class we want. However, a completely individual choice, free of outside pressures is almost impossible.

First, to register, you have to be approved by your advisor. In order to do so, you have to meet with that professor and discuss your options for the next semester. This discussion usually focuses on your interests, and your goals and objectives for your educational career. The professor usually provides advice (which is of course what they’re supposed to do), although whether consciously recognized or not, their words immediately detract from your ability to make a completely independent choice. I know that in my last meeting with my advisor, although I had already written down my top choices for classes, she voiced her opinion, strongly recommending that I consider taking a specific music course. Although it is understandable that she made such a recommendation due to her position in the music department, her advice made me question the classes that I had already written down. Now, I had to consider my own wishes along with hers in my decision for the next semester’s classes, therefore transforming a choice that is supposed to be individual into one that is pressured externally.

Choosing classes in an open curriculum is not always as open as it seems; in fact by the time your registration time comes around, many classes are already closed. It isn’t unfair that registration is dictated by seniority, and times are randomly assigned, but this hinders the individual choice we make. It is not a completely free choice; it is influenced and confined based on the choices that others make as well.

Of course, we can’t make just any choice in classes; we have to fulfill our major and minor requirements. Although this pressure seems to come from the school, it indirectly comes from societal expectations. As we discussed in class, for most of us, not going to college barely crossed our minds. We recognize that people want us to be successful, and based on our surroundings, success tends to be linked to higher education. Within the higher education, we are then expected to declare a concentration. The extent to which this declaration is completely our choice contains a separate set of external pressures that we could analyze as well. But in choosing classes, for one semester alone, the number of external pressures seems overwhelming. So although Hamilton calls it an “open curriculum,” how open is it really?

What are you going to do?

Are you going to apply to college? Are you going to drag yourself out of bed to get to class by 9 am? Wear a shirt and tie to the church service? Personally, I grew up in an area where going to college was a goal everybody strived for, when class is scheduled for 9 am, I will get of bed and walk to class, I will wear a shirt and tie to the church service even though it is not required. This is a flaw in my personality and too many others in society, a flaw that aligns myself with society. In fact, none of these situations are required. Choice is an act of selection for a reason. This reason can also be a false understanding of perception. The ability of choice is often washed away due to the influence of society. Technically, a class time is just a time on a schedule. Yes, you have to attend to receive credit, and understand the course, but who is telling you to go other then the norm of society?

I know successful people who did not attend college. Not only because the thought of it greatly diminished their savings, but also because they thought it limited their ability to expand and explore what they want to explore; not what a professor wants to teach or explore. This is not my personal belief, but many believe college is like a straight jacket that gets you on the train to success. You just have to remember what is more important, your personal choice? Or the norm of society? Choice is a choice for a reason.

Fine Print

One of my pet peeves is when I enter into an agreement under the impression that all the terms were made clearly known to me, and then, the fine print distorts the terms of the agreement, usually to my disadvantage. Fine print is a tool designed for salesmen and other dealmakers to take advantage of the person agreeing to a contract. It unfairly makes use of the fact that people hurry through life and only skim through documents that they naively perceive to be straightforward. One time, I was considering signing up for Napster in order to download my music. I was about to purchase a subscription when I noticed the fine print in the agreement stating that all music I downloaded to my computer would be deleted if I ever were to cancel my subscription with Napster. That fine print was a deal breaker.

Yes, it is possible to read through all the fine print in every document. Ideally, we all would do that. However, fine print in contracts is often so long and dense – with most (but not all) of it being relatively meaningless – it becomes impractical to spend extra time reading it.

Advertising also utilizes fine print to more effectively sell products. Countless times, I have caught a glimpse of a sign from afar claiming something like: “50% OFF ALL STORE MERCHANDISE*”. Naturally, I would wander over to the store to check out the relatively cheaper goods, but once I would walk up closer to the sign, I would notice the asterisk next to the “MERCHANDISE” and find its twin at the bottom of the poster, claiming: “After an original purchase of $50.00.” The advertisement was clearly misleading, with the intention of drawing in potential consumers under false pretenses.

Often, the fine print contains fairly important information, such as disclaimers about safety or notices that render all responsibility on you, if you were to get injured while using that company’s product. In these cases, companies use fine print for their own protection, which consequently leaves consumers vulnerable to the risks of these products.

We talk in class about how often we are purposefully mislead or fed false information in these books we are reading. These tricks of writing blind us from determining the truth in the stories to the point where we forgo trying to discover what is true. Fine print behaves the same way. An attractive-looking contract or advertisement will draw us into a deal that is, in reality, skewed favorably toward the dealmaker, yet we fail to see this truth, because it remains hidden in the fine print.

Perceptions

The novella Aura is largely about perception, which we understand right from the beginning with the use of 2^nd person point of view. This is fairly uncommon, so right away we can be curious about what we are about the encounter. Perception also plays a role in the plot of the story because the book as a whole can be read in multiple ways. As in class, we had countering arguments about whether Filipe became the general by reading and editing the memoir with his own voice or if he was always the general and just by being in the presence of the house and reading his own memoir helped him realize it. Another level of the perception in this novella is Filipe’s own perception of himself.

This novella has so many layers that we are not able to put it down and it is certainly a book that we have to think about afterwards to understand what exactly happened and what it was that we just read. However, what this book boils down to is what we perceive it to be. Each perception allows for the book to be different. On page 81, Senora Consuelo is talking about the rabbit and states: “They’re always themselves, Senor Montero. They don’t have any pretensions.” This quote is about being natural and free with one’s self as it relates to understanding one’s character. For this text, this is about Filipe’s perception with himself in a kind of reverse dramatic irony where only the other characters know who he really is and the reader is literally in Filipe’s shoes.

Imagination

Today in class we discussed how the pictures in the book manipulate the reader to imagine the characters and setting a certain way. This was similar to how we have been conditioned to see Harry Potter as Daniel Radcliffe rather than the way Rowling describes him in the text. It seemed as though the whole class established that they didn’t like that kind of manipulation. I disagree, I like when there is already a picture of who the characters are. I find it a lot easier to see the text playing out in my head when I know exactly what the characters look like.

Maybe I don’t have an imagination (which is why I’m not looking forward to coming up with another chapter to House of Danger) or maybe I’m so used to having rules laid out for me that I never fully developed my imagination and creativeness. I don’t mean that I didn’t have a childhood, I did I promise. I guess I just lost touch with my imagination growing up. It’s like taking time off from a sport. After a while you get pretty rusty and if you let years pass without playing, you end up losing almost all of your ability.

House of Danger

So my adventure lasted for about 5 minutes in which Venus Flytraps attacked me…ouch. Anyways, I was really dissatisfied by the ending I chose because my story was so short and I was sure there was a “better” and “more accurate” ending for me. Maybe I’m the only one who did this, but I was really curious about the other 20 or so endings. So I spent another 15 minutes picking and choosing different endings, not really liking any of them and then I gave up and realized that there is no “right” ending. And that made me think of all the discussions we had in class about truth, reality, and perception.

I think Montgomery’s House of Danger was a good book for us to read last in this class because it kind of summarized a majority of the topics we’ve discussed about truth. We could interpret the numerous ending within the book as a parallel to the multiple realities in life; therefore, truth does not truly exist. Everything is simply perception. Additionally, we mentioned in class that humans are constantly searching for the truth and I proved that notion when I searched furiously for different endings. I think we generally need a harsh reality thrust upon us to be satisfied and that is why we continue to search for the truth. Again, these are all things we touched on in class, but I really like how this House of Danger reminded me of these ideas.

Bringing it all Back Home

Recently, in my philosophy of literature class, we discussed the book, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and the questioning of the truthfulness of the stories presented-in our case, we only read one story for class. We discussed whether or not the truthfulness of each clinical tale even really mattered. Now, I'm going to be writing a short paper discussing the ideas presented in class and arguing that the story is emphasized as truth throughout the book and considering the story as fiction takes away from a great deal of its meaning.

Palimpsest

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ‘palimpsest’ is ‘something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface.’ As we discussed in class, the idea of palimpsest can be sensed early in the text in Aura. When Felipe goes to Donceles Street, he notices that most of the houses have had their numbers changed, but the impressions of the old numbers still remain. There had been no deliberate effort to erase the old identities of the houses. Similarly, the building themselves are a juxtaposition of the old and the new. The first floors of the former colonial mansions have been redesigned into commercial stores, but the upper floors remain unperturbed by the changing times.

This idea of palimpsest, or an overlay of characteristics, becomes a central theme for the rest of the book. As we learn later in the text, Aura is a projection of Consuelo herself; in a sense, Aura is overlaid on Consuelo. Similarly, Felipe merges into the role of the General over the course of the story. Firstly, when Felipe dreams of Aura and she tells him, “You’re my husband.” (77), he agrees without hesitation. Later, when he sees pictures of the General with Aura and Consuelo, he realizes he looks very much like the General himself. Lastly, by the end of the book, when he realizes he’s in bed with Consuelo and not Aura, he does not retreat. He willingly accepts the role of the General, as Consuelo’s husband. This way, there is a layer of Aura over Consuelo and a layer of the General over Felipe. This collapse of new and old, past and present obscures the idea of time and generations. They become “changed, painted over, confused” (9) like the house numbers on Donceles Street.

On that note, it is interesting to notice that the book is written in present tense. The use of present tense gives us a sense of immediacy; it puts us in the moment and makes us curious about the immediate future. At the same time, it makes us uncomfortable due to the lack of knowledge of the past. It keeps us searching for both the past and the future at the same time. This idea of collapsing the past and the future in the present moment is consistent with the overall theme of the book as well.

Great Discussion

I very much enjoyed discussing Aura in class this past Thursday because the novel is, as many have pointed out on the blog, abstract. There were serious but cordial disagreements on the existence of central characters. However, I think everyone in the class took someone away from the discussion, because each member of the class read the book slightly or completely differently from everyone else. This is really my goal for each class period and I don't always get that moment of “yah, I see what you mean” or “that's a really cool way to look at that” that I experienced several times of Thursday. I found the discussion of Felipe and the General to be very intriguing. I didn't pick up on some of the details, such as the unexplained appearance of Felipe's personal items, that support the thought that Felipe had always been the General. I came in to class believing that Felipe was distinct from the General and that he developed into the General through reading and writing the General's memoirs in a highly secluded environment. The discussion unhinged my perception of the two characters. Like many books we have read this semester, its very unwise to try to pin anything down too concretely. Hearing several people successfully argue very different readings of Aura really solidified this point for me. I would certainly advocate another “teaching” of the text in the future. This sort of discussion pushes us a class to articulate what is important and we do and do not agree on.

I would also like to say a little bit about the use of second person in Aura. We spoke quite briefly on the subject during the discussion on Thursday. I agree that this unusual choice of point of view amplifies the confusion or supernatural effect of Felipe's development into or return to the General. However, I didn't find the point of view to be as unusual or effective as I thought I would. After the first twenty pages, I just got used to the second person grammar but I didn't experience a closer connection with Felipe. There was still a distance, a disconnect between reader and character. I didn't feel that I was any more a part of the novel than I usually do, reading novels in either first or third person. I just thought I should point this out and see if anyone else felt at all the same way.

Eyes (O.o)

In the first chapter of Aura, eyes are mentioned several places in the text. The novella speaks of "your" pupils and eyelashes (page 7 and 15), the rabbit's "glowing red eyes" (page 15), Señora Consuelo's "very wide... clear, liquid, enormous" eyes (page 23), and Aura's "sea green" eyes that "surge, break to foam, grow calm again, then surge again like a wave" (page 27). The description of eyes in this novella are very descriptive, and eyes play a couple of distinctive roles in this text:

1) Eyes go along with the theme of perception in Aura. How the readers and characters physically see and perceive different actions influences the readers and characters' experience. Eyes are an interesting aspect in this novella because everything that is seen with these individual eyes is not actually what happens. In this novella, "seeing is believing" is not the case; eyes are actually deceptive to the characters and the readers.

2) Eyes, in a sense, are the window to one's soul and gives immense insight into the individual characters; this is especially true in the case of Señora Consuelo and Aura. Señora Consuelo's eyes are "very wide... clear, liquid, [and] enormous;" moreover, her eyes are "almost the same color as the yellowish whites around them." When looking at Señora Consuelo's eyes, it is difficult to distinguish where her iris begins and ends; her character is the same way, as we learn that it becomes difficult to distinguish between Señora Consuelo and Aura. The ambiguity of Señora Consuelo's eyes parallels the ambiguity of Señora Consuelo's character. Aura's eyes also give insight into her character: they "surge, break to foam, grow calm again, then surge again like a wave." Aura's eyes are ever-changing, just like Aura's character; Aura's most significant change is when she ages forty years overnight. Aura's eyes act like a wave, which almost cycles; this relates to her character too, as Aura is a cycle of youth to old, and then a reflection of rebirth.

As mentioned in previous posts, there are definite similarities between Aura and Kindred. But I’ve noticed, and this was also touched on in class, that both stories show that history, or the past, will always return to disrupt the present in some form. In Kindred, Dana is consistently brought back to the eighteen teens and as a result, her life in 1976 is completely disorientated. Every time she comes back to the present, she is unsure how to behave, act, or feel. As Dana is brought back in time, her present is repeatedly disrupted. In Aura, Felipe’s present is disturbed when memories of the past arise as he edits General Llorente’s memoirs. I think the use of history in fiction is important because it shows the readers the importance of past and how it dictates our everyday lives.

Perception

As with many other books we have read throughout the semester, a central theme in Aura was perception. For example, Aura and Conseulo were the personification of one identity with two ways to look at it. I think you can apply this to reading literature as a whole. From what I’ve learned so far, there isnt one absolute truth, no one way to interpret the purpose of a quote, and no fixed way to read a book. You can read a book for its similarity to war to start a discussion on the horrors of Vietnam, or you can read that same book to try and find the truth to story telling. Thus, a book is one identity with many different ways of looking at it. It’s almost the same thing as reading a poem. The meaning behind the poem is the meaning that you find, and its not necessarily the meaning that the author intended (does that meaning even really matter?).

Light/Dark

One of the most prominent motifs in Aura is that of light/dark. Light typically represents knowledge, clarity, goodness, happiness, life, and truth, but in this text light is often filtered, fleeting, broken up, scattered or blinding to create a sense of illusion. Only certain aspects of the picture are illuminated, and so the whole image becomes distorted. Light can also be manipulated to cause someone to see things that aren't there and create optical illusions. Carlos Fuentes has taken a typically friendly symbol and used it to give the text a more mysterious and sinister feel.

Most of Aura is set in partial or total darkness. Consuelo prefers to keep her house in constant darkness, which creates the impression that something or someone could be hiding. Consuelo herself seems to be hiding, because she does not want Felipe to see that Aura is just an illusion of youth that she projects, that she and Aura are one and the same which means that the woman he loves is ancient and skeletal. Felipe's true identity as General LLorente also hides, until he hold a picture of the general up to the light and discovers the truth. In darkness there is no clear distinction between one thing and another. The past blends with the present, youth blends with age, a rabbit blends into a girl, identities and realities blend with each other. When Felipe first meets Aura he describes her as being "afraid of the light" (27). This could be because the light reveals that Aura is not who she wants Felipe to think she is.

The Rabbit and the Cat

One of the first things that struck me as odd in Aura was in the first scene in which Felipe meets Senora Consuelo. A white rabbit with glowing red eyes is sitting on the bed next to Consuelo and after Felipe pets it, it jumps off the bed and disappears. Consuelo soon says “Saga, Saga. Where are you?” Felipe then asks, “Who?” and Consuelo then responds “My companion.” Felipe says “The rabbit?” and Consuelo responds “Yes. She’ll come back.” Then a few pages later Aura comes into the room and Consuelo says “I told you she’d come back” and when Felipe questions “Who?” Consuelo replies “Aura. My companion. My niece.” From this exchange, it seems as though the rabbit and Aura are interchangeable, that they are one and the same.

The rabbit is Consuelo’s foil; it represents almost everything that Consuelo is not. The rabbit represents fertility, reproduction, and lust. The only thing that Consuelo longs for that the rabbit does not necessarily represent is youth. Rabbits are fertile and reproduce throughout their entire lives; they don’t need to be young in order to reproduce. Also the rabbit is white which coincides with Consuelo’s white hair (representing age). However, the rabbit’s combination with Aura completes the foil because Aura adds youth to the picture. Aura represents youth, lust, and her green eyes and clothing represent fertility. Another interesting thing about the rabbit is its name; according to Cambridge dictionary online a saga is “a long story about several past events or people.” Saga the rabbit may be named so because it represents the saga of Consuelo’s struggle with fertility (or the lack thereof).

Another interesting symbol in Aura is the cat. Felipe hears cats yowling inside the house and sees many on fire in the garden but Consuelo insists that there are no cats. It’s an old myth that cats have nine lives and many ancient cultures held cats to be sacred creatures. Consuelo takes pleasure in torturing cats; this represents her hatred of a being that represents what she can never have, eternal life and eternal youth. Cats may also represent independence and self-sufficiency. Consuelo has lost her independence because she is dependent on Aura for her youth, Aura is never independent of Consuelo, and Felipe slowly loses his independence as he becomes part of Consuelo's world.

So overall, cats and rabbits are pretty darn important in Aura.