New Money, Old Money, and Everyone Else

     In The Great Gatsby, there is a distinct difference between people such as Jay Gatsby who lives on West Egg and the Buchanans who live on the eastern counterpart. Readers, English teachers, and Sparknotes pages everywhere say that on West Egg, it's "new money"; on East Egg, it's "old money."
     New money refers to the newly rich--people who made their own fortune, as opposed to their great-great-great-great Puritan grandfather. For some reason, they happen to congregate in West Egg (or at least Gatsby does). With the title character being the only one who truly represents new money in the entire book, Fitzgerald takes liberties to deck Gatsby out in all the stereotypical traits of "new money". Excited by having finally achieved his lifelong love/dream of wealth, Gatsby spends his money lavishly (nice cars, rad parties, lawn services for his neighbor). Because this group of people is recently wealthy, they haven't had time to seclude themselves with only the snooty elites. They're still relatively grounded with "everyone else" 's customs, and they tend to be friendlier and more hospitable (cough when Gatsby sent a stranger partygoer a brand new $265 dress and threw parties every weekend and hired people to mow his neighbor's lawn without his neighbor's consent). In slight contrast, Nick Carraway may not be "new money" yet, but he seems on his way. More importantly, his I-want-to-make-it-on-my-own mentality differs from his family's (read: Daisy Buchanan) and defines the more worldly, goal-setting ideals of "new money".
    Old money refers to the rich people who inherited their fortune, and whose families have been wealthy for some time. Tom and Daisy Buchaaon represent old money, and the defining characteristic separating them and, say, Gatsby, is that they are "careless people", and they "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made." The "other people" who clean up old money's messes do it because of old money's wealth and power; because of that, old money rides through life never fully learning moral responsibility. From the very beginning, they are taught to be careful with their images (perhaps even to the point of facade) and expected to uphold suffocating airs of etiquette, etiquette that people such as Gatsby did not acquire along with their new wealth. At one point, Gatsby notes that Daisy's voice is "full of money"--and we can infer it's referring to the fact that she was born with money and raised so that wealth became such an instrumental part of her that not even an old lover could separate her from its effects.

I'm Thankful (for a classmate)

        One of the people I appreciate in 6th period English is Barni, a freshman/frackie. We've been in the same division for two years already, and her antics are always amusing. She's smart, relatively friendly, and we've had enough classes together since 7th grade to be on pretty good terms with each other. This year, we have Instructional Support together, and she helps out with my questions about work and vice versa. During 6th, we sit next to each other everyday and group work assignments get done pretty easily and well between us (and, sometimes, a third person).
        (She also tells me what we do in Mr. Bauer's Chem that day.)

        Thanks, Barni :D

Celebrating Myself

Transcendentalists believe that society with its horrid, wicked, corrupt, Mother Gothel ways peer-pressure a person’s individualism into a smaller and smaller block until it ultimately disappears altogether. Though traits such as religion and politics are often the big culprits that immediately spring to mind, there are also little things (Uggs) that set a certain standard for normalcy (the Common App) and leave the individual no real choice except “this or die”.

My initial reaction at the phrase “celebrating [my]self” was “birthday parties!” because what better way is there to express how awesome and loved and individual you are based on the annual date of your birth? But then in the next moment, I realized, Well, there's only a couple of millions of other people with the same exact birthday, so maybe not.

A little more thinking (maybe about seven seconds' worth) and I realized that, well, there's a better and much more profound way to approach this. There are many different ways to celebrate many different things, but for an individual to celebrate himself, would it mean simply differentiating himself from others? If so, then what differentiates two people more than the way they live life and the decisions they make? The little (and big) yes-or-no, this-or-that decisions we make everyday reflect our ideals, our history, our personal versions of reason, and they help paint a larger picture of who we are as individuals.

Ultimately, what's a better way to celebrate yourself than by showing the world who you are?

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe--born Edgar Poe--was a 19th century American author and poet. He was born to considerably humble beginnings, a family that wasn't anything already particularly special and parents who left him and his siblings either willingly or by death. Poe was then adopted by John Allan, a family man who was also a trader of many different types of goods.

As he grew up, Poe went through periods of education (his highest academic achievement being one year at the University of Virginia) and enlisted in the United States Army. He was eventually discharged, though not long after, his brother died, resulting in Poe turning to literature as a career option. It was a difficult time to be a professional writer in America at the time as there was a lack of copyright laws; however, after several attempts, he eventually succeeded in making a decent name for himself.

His literature is categorized as Gothic, and often contain themes of mystery and supernatural events or beings. It also contains many big-as-life themes, including mourning, premature burial, and life and death themselves. A few of his well-known pieces include The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart.

Along the way, he secretly married his cousin, Virginia, who so happened to be thirteen while he was twenty-six. Poe continued to write, but when Virginia fell ill with which we presume to have been tuberculosis and eventually died, he was reported to have become erratic and alcohol-dependent. About two years after Virginia died, Poe passed away as well, and the number of speculated causes are many. It is said that in the last few years of his life, his mental state slowly deteriorated to the point where he didn't want people to understand the true meanings of his work, but would become angry if they misunderstood. Yet, of course, dozens of decades later, it's interesting to note that we are still attempting to draw from his literature, though now, we'd have to wonder whether or not our analyzations are making Poe writhe in his grave or not...

What is an American?

     By definition, an American is "a native or citizen of the United States".

     True.

     But then, the question is why don't we ever answer "American" when people ask us our ethnicity? Caucasians whose families have been here for generations may say "white", and if you press for something more specific, chances are they might launch into, "Well, I'm part Dutch, French, Italian, British, Russian, Polish, Scandinavian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian...".

     It's not much, but I have a theory. Compared to the rest of the world, the United States is relatively young. It was fortunate enough to have been born with an adolescent rebel mindset, and not unlike a certain child born out of adultery, it is fresh and new and unbiased (well, from one perspective, anyways). At some point, it became a "melting pot", a congregation of many different types of people from around the world. When you have a newly arrived group of people, you're not going to expect them to be in unison already.
    It's the equivalent of having a certain year's tributes gathered up in The Capitol; you're not going to ask them where/what are you because it's quite obvious that they're in The Capitol and they're one of that year's tributes. Instead, you'd probably ask what district are you from, because it's the one that they can give you an answer to without an accompanying look questioning both you and your existence. From this viewpoint, it's simply logic and a tad of human etiquette.

     However, if the United States isn't an "ethnicity", then where did the other ethnicities come from? Other countries, yeah? But what's the difference between all the other countries and the US? Why are their native people automatically deemed "[Country]-an" by us and their emigrants?
    The answer, I believe, is simply time.
    The other countries in question have had time to establish their racial features and culture, while I return to the fact that the U.S. is incredibly relatively young. But doesn't this kind of mean that "American" will eventually be an ethnicity too, just like all the others? The races of the world will begin to meld here, slowly but somewhat surely, and before long (maybe a few hundred, thousand years), the ethnicity of this country will be that of all the other ethnicities in the world combined.

     Basically, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great(x100)-grandchildren may travel abroad someday and be presented with the question of, "So what ethnicity are you?" in some language or another, and--who knows?--they just might say, "American."

The Modern Puritans

     The first thing that leapt to my mind when I heard the words "modern Puritan" was, "Mormons!" (and totally not because I saw the Book of Mormon just last month).

     To put it simply, Mormons are a group of people who follow the religion of Mormonism. Mormonism is classified as a subcategory of Christianity, but they differ in significant ways (i.e. the first Mormons followed the Young [pun intended if italics wasn't enough of a hint] American Moses to Sal Tlay Ka Siti, Utah in 1844). Their Broadway representation portrayed them as wholly faithful people with traditions and beliefs as cemented and varied and strange as the next sector of Christianity.

      But then I started thinking, and before long, I realized that hey, wait, aren't a lot of religions in some way restrictive on their believers and, to some degree, intolerant of other beliefs or ideas? Aside from the friendly, do-gooding Mormons, certain churches (read: Westboro Baptist) come to mind when the word "intolerant" is brought to the table.

      But then I kept thinking, and after a little while, my head started going around in fuzzy circles, which is when I know I need to take a step back and take a clearer look at the heart of my problem: the idea of the modern Puritan. Okay, well, what was a Puritan? What defined them?

     The most general, all-around description off of the top of my head is, "group of people exiled due to their extreme religious beliefs".

     Okay, well, the word "extreme" is subjective, so how about just "group of people exiled due to their religious beliefs"? And, well, that kind of phrasing reminds me an awful lot of the Holocaust. And if the 1930s and '40s were only about seventy or so years ago, then that's moderately recent, right?

     Right, maybe not, since smartphones didn't exist back then and any time before an iPhone is practically prehistoric.

     Maybe there are countries or areas in the world right now in the year 2013 A.D. persecuting people due to their religious beliefs, but none are turning up in my mind, so what else can I do but go to Google?

     According to an article on Rome Reports, Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world thanks to the intolerant governments and citizens of China, Cuba, North Korea, and the like.

     ...Right, so we're back to the Christianity bit.

     But how about taking the idea of the Puritans beyond just persecution? How about just "oppressed people"? After all, the Puritans oppressed themselves in many ways due to their own traditions and beliefs.

     And that is when the stork delivered my epiphany.

     In a very liberal way of interpreting the phrase, we are all "modern Puritans" in just about every aspect of life. We are all oppressed and held fast by laws, authority, physical and mental capabilities, and/or morality. Kids must be educated, I can't sparkle naturally in the sun like Edward Cullen, and none of us should beat people to death with a sledgehammer somehow made from the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan while high on crystal meth while in the United States of America.

     To be perfectly honest, for a while, I thought that I had nothing in common with the Puritans in The Crucible. However, I realize now that I do, and despite how "well, duh" it is, the fact is that we are all simply  human.

John Proctor: Hero or Stooge?

     According to Merriam-Webster, a hero is a) "a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities" b) "the chief male character in a story, play, movie, etc." c) "a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability" or d) "an illustrious warrior".
     According to the same Encyclopædia Britannica, a stooge is a) "a weak or unimportant person who is controlled by a powerful person, organization, etc." b) "a performer in a show who says and does foolish things that other performers make jokes about".

Meet my hero/stooge chart which will help determine the fate of John Proctor's legacy.

Hero | Stooge

     |

     |

      Although Proctor was arguably the "chief male character in a...play", he was no demigod prowling the farms of colonial America and he wasn't portrayed as a soldier or shown to have had any sort of military affiliation. That alone cancels out most of the definitions for "hero".

Hero | Stooge
I     |
     |

     As evidenced by many scenes and actions, Proctor was a man of his own virtues and possibly the most realistically imperfect man in the entire play. Did he have his flaws? Yes. He cheated on his faithful wife with their teenage servant. He was not a hundred percent faithful to the Puritan religion. He was brash, temperamental, and stubborn.
     Was he brave? Yes. He accepted his affair with Abigail, but he was strong enough inside to understand that what he was doing was wrong and had the willpower to completely shut it down, even if there was a small part of him that didn't want to. He ripped up warrants and confessions and made petitions. He stood up against the Salem court and pointed his finger where nobody else pointed.
     But, was he admired? Did the townspeople of Salem really respect him? If evidence shows that they ultimately refused him and instead went with the words of adolescent girls (a decision that resulted in his execution), is that really a hero or just a martyr? 

Hero | Stooge
I     |
     |

     Despite his persistence, courage, and logic, he was still condemned to death with eighteen other "witches". Politically, this means that he was weak and unimportant. He was controlled by the townspeople, the court. For a certain period of time, Abigail was also the puppeteer of one of the strings binding his limbs. He personally did not accomplish the task of saving Elizabeth because it was the Puritans' values that saved her (although, indirectly, I suppose you could say he did because he was the one who impregnated her...), and he achieved nothing as far as his second desire of wanting to save his friends either. He instigated guilt upon Danforth and the others towards the end, but not enough to save the remaining convicts who were sentenced to death, himself included.

Hero | Stooge
I     | I
     |

     The second point needs a little more metaphor, but bear with me here. At some point, the Salem Witch Trials became a circus, a performance. Abigail and the girls raked in the fame as the lead actresses; Danforth was the ringmaster who raked in the cash. Proctor was much lower than them on the ladder—maybe he was one of the clowns who are the butt of all the physical and verbal jokes? And though Abigail and Danforth didn't literally turn him into a laughingstock, they saw him and what he stood for as a joke of an obstacle in their way to their personal goals. He—along with many others—was a victimized performer in the circus that was the Salem Witch Trials.

Hero | Stooge
I     | II
     |

     Though of course, these terms and his actions are largely subjective. The humane part of me that read John Proctor's story would say that he was a hero, a martyr, a heroic martyr. However, dictionary definitions and the people and story of Salem would likely deem him as a stooge, and  in this case, that is also the label I'm putting on him.