Making It Through The Day

Telemachus has been told many times in his life that he is timid. This, unfortunately, is the truth. Telemachus cowars when faced with a prediciment. He is neither assertive nor aggressive, so how is he a leader at all? How does he lead anything let alone an entire crew of men? The answer is quite simple. Telemachus does not do anything himself really, he just get huge boosts from others.

Pallas Athena favors Telemachus very highly and wants him to discover the truth about his father. However, Telemachus himself does not seem too inclined to do so at first. He is just too scared. So Athena simply tells him exactly what to do in order to become a man a find his father. Like a fake smile shows “happiness”,  think that the confidence that Athena instills in Telemachus is only a mere facade or an illusion. It takes more than a little pep talk to give a man confidence in himself. So in the end, everytime Telemachus gives a command or decides on something, chances are that they are Athena’s prompts. Honestly, Telemachus probably would not have even sought out his father had it not been for Athena. So he really is not a leader at all, just a weak engine that only runs off of false confidence.

Too often this sort of scenario happens in real life. A person is just a puppet and acts only on the will of others, not their judgement at all. People buckle under the pressure of society, succoming to everyone else’s wills and demands. This is most definitely not a way to make decisions but sadly it may be one of the most common methods.

Isaac bares two sons, Esau the oldest and Jacob the youngest. Isaac favorites his older son because he hunts with great skill and examplifies the manliness that every dad wants, but should he lie his favor on Esau? Sure, he is strong and a skilled hunter, but Jacob has something that Esau does not have: Smarts.

It is made clear that Isaac’s favor does not rest with Jacob. Jacob has soft skin and keeps to himself and does not hunt. Rebekah loves this son the most and she has more reason to. Jacob is clever and much more so that his elder brother. In fact, Jacob uses his cleverness to win Esau’s birth rights. Really, how slow could you be if you trade your birth rights for food? That is right, Esau traded it for lentils and bread. Due to his smarts, Jacob eventually succeeds by earning his father’s blessing and also earns his blessing when he is charged with a task.

Jacob, though lacking in appreciated attributes such as strength, more than makes up for it with his wise and sensible decision making skills as well as cunning and unmatched inteligence, which is not shared with Esau or even Isaac. With his inteligence, Jacob is more successful and proves himself a better son than Esau.

Chapters 6-11 in the book of Genesis demonstrate God’s idea of justice. He sees the error of His ways in creating such an evil creature as man, so He solves this problem by irraticating men all together. This, in my opinion, portrays God as the very evil He sought to destroy. I mean, is He not doing exactly what His humankind was? Maybe not for the same purpose, but basically. What is worse, God then creates the rule that he who sheds the blood of his fellow man shall also have the blood of his own person shed. This just means that if you kill a man, you will die as well. So, following this logic, God Himself deserves to die by His rules. As they say two wrongs do not make a right. Thought He may mean well, God contradicts himself many times.

God also punishes man for their potential. He saw that they could create a tower to reach the heavens as one, so, as punishment for their potential, He scatters them and their languages. To me, this does not seem like justice,  but unfairness. I am not one to challenge the acts of God, but the way he instills rules and meanings is a bit intense and can destroy many things that once were.

As I read the Genesis chapters 1 through 5, I saw one conventional idea: God can be selfish and selfless. God is good, yes, and you could argue that it showed His selflessness when He created life. He gave the breath of life to all living things on earth, but He did not give them knowledge. He kept that for himself, and when Adam and Eve gained knowledge, He punished them. I did not think that that made God look selfless. I mean, is it wrong for man to want knowledge? Absolutely not, and I believe that Adam and Eve’s behavior/actions did not merit there expoltion from the Garden.

Then agian though, God did also show fairness in justice. For instance, God gave humankind the emotion of jealousy. He gave us all our emotions. When Cain killed Abel, God accepted this as wrong and rightly punished him. So, God can be both fair and unfair, just and unjust. Sometimes, He works for good, and people today argue that. God works everything for good, but sometimes it appears hard to believe with such punishments as the ones he has delt, but for the most part, God tries his hardest for our sake, even though it may seem cruel at times.

In the novel The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, the Master of Jordan College explains much of what is to come of Lyra. At one point, before she departs with Mrs. Coulter, he explains what is happening in the world around her. He says, “‘The powers of this world are very strong. Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can  imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.’” (Pullman, pg. 73)

Master, in the novel, appears to the reader as a strong, wise man who looks after Lyra in her tender developmental stage of life. When he decides that she must leave with Mrs. Coulter, he gives this brief explanation of the changing world around her. This piece of knowledge is brief but is extremely informative. From this simple metaphor, the reader can ascertain that men and women are beginning to choose sides in life. Master’s words come eventually become more apparent as the world indeed changes. These simple words are incredible tools of knowledge that explains exactly whats going to happen.

Master’s words, though referring to the great events eventually taking over the story, also explain nature as a human. These words offer insight as to why people do the things they do. It is said that people are changing in multitudes by different powers, in this case good and evil. Many men and women are having to choose sides and stick by there vindications. Master best synopsizes this great happening in few words and these words indeed explain why humans act and what they believe, for it is power that moves them all.

There once was a young boy named Billy. Billy was even tempered, smart, fun-loving, and a smile aways crossed his round face. Billy was all this and more, but only when could manage to stay awake. Billy showed all the characteristics of a promising youth, but his sleep got in the way.

Billy’s deadliest flaw as a person was that he loved sleep. Most people do enjoy a good nights rest, but Billy sleeped whenever he was not standing.Okay, he even sleeped when he was standing.  This made Blilly a burden to everyone around him. Billy was often carried from place to place in his hibernation like sleep. Not everyone found this task exactly fun. Also, Billy’s sleep attacks came at the worst of times. At church, for instance, once when Billy went up to get the wine, he suddenly fell asleep and spilled the wine all over the alter. The priest threw a fit and Billy was promptly shown the door. One day Billy made the worst slip up of all and the result was less than pleasureable.

Once on Halloween, Billy was out and about trick or treating. For once, he managed to stay awake, for he was too hyped up on sugar to sleep now. When he was walking home the candy started wearing off. He approached a woman dreseed as a witch, already half asleep. She stirred a sizzling green concotion in a cauldron and muttered a few words. Billy’s conscious finally gave out and he collapsed in a deep slumber. In falling, though, he knocked over her cauldron spilling green goo all over the flowers which suddenly became magnificent birds of color and flew away.

“You idiot!!” shrieked the witch

“You like sleep so much? How much would you like it in an eternal nightmare?” she cackled

The witch bellowed some words in an odd tongue and Billy gave a shutter. Billy’s head became clouded with fear and anguish. He was shaking in his sleep. Monsters and demons and other such things filled his head. When he finally came to, he was being shaken awake by his parents.

Still trembling, he said, “I  vow to sleep only during the night.”

With that, Sleeping Billy was finally gone and Billy’s life was never hindered by nap attacks again.

In a rap album entitled The Documentary by the rapper known as The Game, the introduction to the album has a quote in the song that was very striking to hear in a rap song. An annoucer was talking and about life and says, “It’s all just a game, ladies and gentleman, and the quality of your living depends entirely on your ability to play the game, and I play the game.”

The Documentary: information on the album

The Intro To The Documentary: songs from the album

This quote from a song was very stricking because you don’t see that a lot in rap music. It was a lesson in life and gave a the listener a new perspective on a popular idea of how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This is argued by many and people in society often compare the riches’ wealth and the empovisheds’ deplorable state of living and think that the rich are being cruel by not giving the poor their wealth, but what this song is saying is that that is not their fault.

This quote from a song lyric is a kind of defense for the wealthy. Many complain that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” as it is said in the song, but this is not the wealthy’s fault. They too “play the game”, which translated means that they choose the right paths and take the right steps in life. The rich choose to do this and therefore choose a better quality of life. However, the same is applied to the poor, only opposite. They have taken the wrong steps in life, choosing many bad things and not thinking things through. They have carved there own paths and didnt “play the game” very well. So, in life, they literally lose. This is why the rich are rich and the poor are poor. Like the song said, “your quality of life depends entirely on your ability to play the game.”

In a world of black and white, lined or graph, pen or pencil, and of deplorablely ugly doodles, ther is but one whom everyone can rely on. This ones is none other than…….. Super Stick: 2-D Titan!!

In this murky world of dull drawings and skinny stickmen there is one who is the strongest and stoutest of them all. Yes, Super Stick, the result of an immense explosion of creative juices became more exagerated and more realistic than all the other class time doodles. This percipitation of a savior finally gave the world of 2-D hope for the future yet.

Stick Man’s sudden appearance was during a very appropriate time, for there were was a great evil afoot. It was the one thing that all doodles feared and disdained:  words. Yes, as copious amounts of words fill a page, there is less and less room for the doodles to be at play and be created, so Super Stick fights the oppressive ways of note taking and essay writing. He is always present to destroy words so that while the kids are torpidly daydreaming in class they may come up with more and more doodles, and thus Super Stick saves another drawing.

In the short story The 51st Dragon there was one quotation that really stuck out in the entire story. The Headmaster was explaining to Gawaine what had happend when he forgot the magic word and killed the dragon anyways and said,”The word gave you confidence. It took away your fears. If I hadn’t told you that you might have been kille the very first time.”

Broun, Heywood. The Fifty-First Dragon. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

Obviously there was no such thing as magic, but Gawaine did not think so. The Headmaster knew this so to give him confidence he gave him a word to ensure that dragon does not hurt him. Of course was not so but again Gawaine did not know that. So with this word Gawaine lost  all his fear of being killed. He believed in the word which meant, since the word did not really do anything, that he believed in himself. This confidence translated to a sense of invinsibility that only this simple mind trick could do.

Though Gawaine was foolish and gullible to believe that there are such things as magical words, he showed something that is mirrored in a lot of humans. The Headmaster understood that there is power in people’s stupidity. He knew that humans are bound to believe lots of what they are told, so, with the power of influence, he made Gawaine believe in the magic which gave him endless confidence. Influence can make a human do crazy things, too. If they believe something, whether it is true or not, they not only stick with it but defend it. So though humans can be a little apt to believe everything they are told, this can be a sort of armor and protect them in there most important ventures.