#3 love, fear, beauty and the death of dreams

How can I not love the Bluest Eye when Beloved is by far my favorite book!
One passage I can't forget from Beloved and had to put as my quote on the yearbook “too thick? Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.” transcends beloved, the black community and is the fact about humankind: We all yearn to love and are carried away by its strength when we let ourselves to it.
What african americans have gone through is a shame on humankind. Many races, because of their different appearances shared the similar history all around the world. But putting the dark side of history aside, Toni Morrison makes us face the seeds of fear we plant all along our lives in other people's. People alone can kill dreams.
When Frida and Claudia go to see Pecola in the house Mrs.Breedlove works the little girl sees the two girls and “fear dances across her face for a second” (p.108). Because both Claudia and Frida are very young, I don't think they can be that much of scary. But because they are black, even a very little white girl instantly thinks that they are unwelcome intruders. The culture can be so deep in our minds even at an early age that this “pink-and-yellow” girl is capable of categorizing people according to their skin color. It is impossible not to notice that the narrator, Claudia, a little child as well, uses colors to describe that girl too. In order to stick with your own people an be accepted, all of these people try not to cross boundaries and left alone.
And fear is powerful. Fear of loneliness is powerful. Fear made Pauline someone else, Mrs.Breedlove. Before the understanding of “human hatred” consumed her, she was someone filled with colorful dreams and hopes about the future. She believed that somewhere around the world a person is coming to save her and with him she would be whole in the world, accepted, loved and loving in return. When she moved to Ohio, she noticed things were different here than her home town. She says on page 117 “it was hard to get to know folks up here, and I missed my people. I weren't used to so much white folks. The ones I seed before was something hateful, but they didn't come around too much (. . .) But they want all over us. Up north they was everywhere-next door, downstairs, all over the streets-and colored folks few and far between. Northern colored folk was different too. No better than whites for meanness. They could make you feel just as no-count.” Feeling this way, Pauline desperately tries to be someone else to belong only to find that because of who she is she neither can change nor be accepted. She turns into a person who can't love, is afraid to show affection. She gives up the dreams.
Now, when life is like that, who is to blame Pecola to want the bluest eyes?

#2 Research Paper

First of all, I have to share that past couple of days I realized that I am not a huge fan of this persistent and exponentially increasing kind of flu which makes me sleepy all the time! After 3 days of taking what I come to call “pill cocktail“s it is still alive and making me miserable. I'm thankful though, for it created me the free time to look at many articles both related and unrelated to my topic:)
Well, I've decided to write the paper on stereotyping, specifically stereotyping of women in different countries and how it affects their lives, positive and negative. My reasons are: first, I was able to find a numerous intriguing articles that I would like to look further into and secondly, and more important for me, this subject relates to my life. My very two best friends are boys. I adore them and they have been in my life for 5 years now, through the best and worst. Although they are great people that do not approach people with prejudices, through 5 years I had to deal with many different situations in which they unconsciously stereotyped me. They thought I don't like soccer, I love it. They thought I needed to be protected all the time, I could take care of myself better than they mostly did. They thought I'm so fragile and to be handled in excruciating gentleness. They thought I was moody because girls are like that. They thought I'd nag all the time. They even tried to pay the bills at restaurants or other places because that's what a man should do. Come on! I am as equal in dealing with life as you are. But with time, they grew out of this subconscious attitude towards me and I hope with this research I'm going to understand the reasons behind this stereotyping.
Hopefully, I'm going to get well and be in class for thursday.

#1 This is Benjamin. He's a little worried about his future.

This saturday night, as in case of most idle saturday nights, I found myself in the middle of loud music, glittering dresses, eye-piercing lights and excessive amount of booze (some beautifully colored, others with a happy piece of lemon on side and all in all sorts of glasses). Everyone seemed delighted that the music could so easily drown their thoughts as well as their voices. I really welcome weekends with open arms and don't mind blowing off some steam after a week at Tuzla, yet something was off that night. And I seriously blame Benjamin for that. The Graduate-induced ennui is what I call my situation. I felt like the air in the room was being sucked up by those neon gods and left the place immediately saying no goodbyes what-so-ever. As I felt the fresh air outside, I thought about my future and it suddenly downed on me: whether its 1960s and USA or 2010 and Turkey, the youth is eternally doomed to be confused and trapped in social expectations. Even for the ones who have the freedom to act according to their fanciful impulses -those who have their family's support or enough money- most young people cannot break free and just be different. Well, in my case, I want to become a well-known writer, travel around the world and be educated by the gurus of literature. I couldn't care less about maths or chemistry. Yet, here I am stuck in a university, postponing my dreams. Maybe I'll never have the chance to do my soul-searching journey around the world because there is always the problem of graduate school, internships, earning money, starting a conventional life etc. Its so much easier when you lead the "socially acceptable" road. There is a novel that I've read years ago, called The Awakening by Kate Chopin. After I watched the Graduate, the ending becomes not so pointless now. The protagonist of the book, Edna Pontellier is a wealthy woman who is raised according to her social environment. She is married, has children as required in her social circumstance, often acts in a prudish manner and represses her emotions or desires because this is unacceptable in her society. Throughout the novel, she meets people from different backgrounds and realizes her own repressed wish of becoming an artist and leading a different life from others. At the end of the novel, we see Edna swimming far away in the sea and after a while exhaustion overtakes her. Maybe her suicide is not a suicide, and on some metaphorical level, it is a beginning of a new life and finally breaking free from the society.
As for me, from Sunday morning on, the quest for finding a way to be different began. Fingers crossed!