In Defense of Vegas Weddings

In "Marrying Absurd," Joan Didion criticizes Las Vegas Weddings for their tackiness and insincerity. She admittedly does an excellent job of painting a vivid picture of the brides in "orange minidress[es]" and the "stained-glass paper windows" that represent how truly cheap and meaningless these marriages can be. However, she fails to consider the positive sides to the Vegas Wedding, of which I think there are many, depending on the circumstances.

First off, I must clarify that those who spontaneously decide to get married after a night of drinking really are not the ones I'm defending.  While these marriages may sometimes end up working out, I must admit that these are almost never a good idea and under these specific circumstances, I would have to mostly agree with Didion.

However, there are other situations where the Vegas Quickie Wedding may be the perfect choice.  For a couple that is sure that they want to spend the rest of their lives together, but don't have the money for a big wedding, the Las Vegas Wedding is a cheap and easy way to make it official without breaking the bank.  For a couple that is madly in love and feels that the love they have is special enough without having to deal with all of the extra wedding hoopla, Vegas is the perfect place to have a nice, private wedding and then go enjoy some quality vacation time with the one you love. And lastly, for a couple that is entering their Golden Years and maybe is on their 2nd or 3rd marriage, they would want nothing more than to just hop in their car and hit the drive thru marriage stand on their way home so they could just get the formality over with and get on to spending all the years they have left with the one they truly love. 

The Want of Money

In the very first line of his essay, "On the Want of Money," William Hazlitt makes the bold statement that "Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without money." As soon as I read this line I was taken aback.  It was hard for me to focus on the rest of the essay because I couldn't help but let my mind wander thinking about that very first line.

What impacted me most about this statement was how it summarized everything that life could possibly ever be about: the need for money.  Although it's kind of a sad realization, the truth is that no one could possibly ever be happy without money.  Even if someone were to say that they don't need a fancy house or a nice car to be happy, they still need at least some money in order to just stay alive. Someone who showers the with themselves with material things most likely does it because they feel empty inside but, on the other side of the coin, being starving, broke, and homeless is an even worse way to live out your life.

When I think I about the future, I constantly worry about how I'm going to balance going to a good college, starting a family, and having a career I actually care about while still making enough money to survive. I would love more than anything to become a professional musician and tour around the world but I know that even if that dream did somehow come true I wouldn't have the time to start a family and I probably wouldn't even make that much money.  The harsh reality of becoming a musician is that I will probably never make enough money to be happy if do nothing else but that. The only way to make a sufficient amount of money is to compromise in some way, most likely by getting a job I don't really like just stay afloat and support my family. In reality, money doesn't create happiness, but rather the need for money limits it.

Consider the Sausage

While reading the article "Consider the Lobster," I was reminded of a movie I saw recently: Seth Rogan's Sausage Party. Sausage Party tells the story of a hot dog named Frank who has been told all of his life that his purpose in life is to leave the grocery store he lives in and enter "The Great Beyond," where food can go to live out the rest of their lives in happiness.  However, he eventually discovers the truth of what happens in "The Great Beyond" as he hears accounts of the brutal mutilation of some of his friends. Like the lobster piece, Sausage Party tackles the idea of how grotesque the cooking and preparation of food can be. Even though this movie mainly deals with the "lives" of processed and non-living foods, the message of both is the same: that there are many moral considerations when it comes to consuming living things. 

Similar to the graphic images in Sausage Party (seen above), David Foster Wallace uses rather haunting descriptions of how a lobster reacts when it is being boiled.  He describes how they "sometimes try to cling to the container's sides... like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof," and how "you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off."  Both of these accounts left me mortified and got me to see the idea of cooking and eating animals in a whole new light. While I don't think I could give up eating meat all together, I know I'll never be able to cook a lobster without Wallace's haunting words running through my mind.

Clifford The Poor Disabled Dog

So the other day someone asked me, "Hey Caelan, that's a pretty cool blog title, but when are you gonna actually write a blog about Clifford the Big Red Dog?" Originally, I thought, "Why would I that? All my other blogs haven't had anything to do with him so why start now?" But then I thought a little more about Clifford and his stature and realized that there was no better way to discuss disabilities in the media than with this freakishly large dog.

When a child is first introduced to Clifford they see him as a giant but lovable pet who goes on adventures and helps out the people in his neighborhood.  But really, being this large is a major disability for Clifford. Poor little Emily Elizabeth, who is essentially more of an aid than a friend, has to make him a custom dog house, struggle to find enough food to fill him up, and try to discipline him, which is extremely difficult, considering that he's five times as tall as she is.

However, Clifford's struggles go beyond the fact that his size is often overlooked as a disability. In fact, the very name "Clifford The Big Red Dog," represents everything that is wrong with the way that disabled people are portrayed in the media.  In the piece we read this week, Nancy Mairs stated that the worst thing about films and TV shows that portray the disabled, is that they "[take] disability as its major premise," and "[exclude] the complexities that round out a character and make [him or her] whole." Even through the title, Clifford is defined by his disability. Before even reading anything more about Clifford the audience already knows two things about him: he's big and red, two traits that automatically isolate him and make him stand out from every other dog. No matter what he does with his "normal-sized" friends, he will always be limited by his disability and will never be able to do that same things that they can do.  Instead of teaching children a lesson of including everyone regardless of their appearance or physical limitations, Clifford teaches them to isolate those who are different and allow their disabilities to define them forever.

What Really Happens After A Raisin in the Sun

The end of A Raisin in the Sun was a little unsatisfying for me as reader, not just because it left the story feeling somewhat incomplete, but because it was deceptively hopeful. After reading three acts of endless turmoil and conflict within the Younger family, it just seemed very abrupt and unrealistic for this narrative to end on such a positive note.

For the entirety of the play, Walter obsesses over getting the money he needs to invest in the liquor store which he believes will help him achieve his dreams give him a better life. This obsession sends him on a downward spiral, ending in him losing all of the money that he invested and losing the respect of his entire family.  However, this dramatic chain of events seems to all be magically wiped away in the end of the third act.  After refusing Lindner's offer, an act that realistically should not make up for the fact that they he lost almost all of Mama's money, everyone instantly forgave him.  Mama even tells Ruth, "He finally come into his manhood today, didn't he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain..." then proceeds to grab her plant and leave the stage, an ending that really felt more like a bad sitcom finale than the ending of a classic American play.

What angers me most about this ending, though, is that it suddenly seems to completely ignore the grim reality that is sure to follow the Youngers' move to their new neighborhood. Even though Walter has restored his "manhood," and everything seems like it's going to work out, the fact still remains that America is deeply segregated, and the Youngers will not be welcome in their new community.  They are likely to be taunted, threatened, attacked, and at the very least forced out of their neighborhood without too much physical damage done to them.  The real end of this story is inevitably a harsh and discouraging one, but one that would've much more accurately represented the injustice that a black family would've faced at the time.

Damn All the Eggs That Ever Was

After reading even just the first scene of A Raisin in the Sun, I noticed a symbol that I knew would be even more significant than the noses in The Great Gatsby: Walter's Eggs. From the very beginning, the eggs caught my attention, specifically when Ruth asks Walter how he wants his eggs cooked. Despite the fact that Walter replies "Not Scrambled," Ruth proceeds to make her husband scrambled eggs. When first reading this, it caught my attention because of the irony and humor that is created in this moment, but after reading further I noticed that it represented much more than that.

As Act I goes along, it is revealed that Walter has missed out on a very lucrative business oportunity, but is hoping that he will be able to get a second chance when his friend approaches him about investing in a liquor store. However, Walter's Mama, the clear matriarch of the household does not allow him to invest her newly aquired money in this store, as she feels it is too risky. After reading all of that, I looked back on the eggs, and saw them as yet another thing that Walter does not get his way with.

But the eggs represent even more than that. They represent all of his hopes and ambitions, and how they can never be achieved because of his race and his crippling poverty. Walter angrily tells his wife, "Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman say: Eat your eggs. Man say I got take hold of this here world baby! And a woman will say: Eat your eggs and go to work. Man say: I got to change my life, I'm choking to death, baby! And his woman say- Your eggs is getting cold!" Walter takes a look at his life and is bitterly disappointed. He dreams of a life where he and his family can live comfortably and doesn't have to worry about things like aborting their second child just because they can't afford it. But he knows that all of his hopes and dreams will never be achieved because society, including his own family, will never let him. He badly wants his eggs to be cooked the way he desires, but Ruth will never let him have his way. So time goes by and the eggs get cold, and the Youngers still live in poverty.

It Takes Two

After finishing The Great Gatsby, there are many passages that seemed to be more meaningful once I had a chance to think about them in the context of the entire novel. One passage in particular that seemed to change in this way came near the beginning of the story when Nick had just started spending time with Jordan. He writes:

‘You’re a rotten driver,’ I protested. ‘Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn’t to drive at all.’

‘I am careful.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Well, other people are,’ she said lightly.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘They’ll keep out of my way,’ she insisted. ‘It takes two to make an accident.’

When I first read this passage, I read it as just a small fight about Jordan's driving skills. What I thought then, was that it was just meant to be an example to further prove what Nick was saying about her dishonesty and careless attitude. However, after reading the entire novel, I realized that this section, especially the last line, seems to as a perfect representation of the car crash that happens at the end of thetory.

When taking it in a literal sense, this line foreshadows how it took the carelessness of both Daisy and Myrtle to cause this accident. If Daisy had been sober and less distracted, and if Myrtle had not let her emotions get the best of her, the crash would not have occurred. 

However, I believe that this line has a much greater symbolic meaning as this line is not just referring to the literal car crash that occurs, but also to the horrific breakdown of Daisy and Tom's marriage. When it comes to their love, it really did "take two" to make it all fall apart.  Tom had been unfaithful in their marriage almost since it began, which indeed put a strain on their relationship, but it wasn't until Daisy and Gatsby reignited their love that the relationship truly crumbled.  It took her affair to spark Tom's anger which led to him humiliating Gatbsy, causing her love for both her lover and her husband to fade once and for all.  Also, if it weren't for Tom's affair with Myrtle, she never would come running towards the car. And if it weren't for Gatsby and Daisy's affair, Daisy never would've been driving Gatsby's car, and the crash would've never occurred. Because of both of their unfaithfulness, Daisy is forced to live without the hope of one day reuniting with her true love, because, ever since their "accident," he has been as dead as Daisy's love for Tom.