Alankar's Blogs

  *Disclaimer: I have nothing against teachers. Over the weekend, I was watching a funny video on YouTube where a teacher was yelling at a student because he did not know how to use the ‘Y =’ button was on his calculator. As any other cultured person would do, I read the comment section and actually spent more time reading the comments than the duration of the video itself. What I found was just appalling. Everyone was defending the student, saying that it’s because of this behavior by the teacher that students are afraid to ask questions, and that this teacher was in the wrong. Such notions are outrageous! The math teacher was absolutely right to scream because the student didn’t know about ‘Y =’. ‘Y =’ is the most important thing anyone will ever encounter in life. I will go as far as to say Y = life. It was the ‘Y =’ function which gave me birth. It was ‘Y =’ which taught me to walk and talk: parents are just side characters. ‘Y =’ is essential to who I am, and to who everyo...

  What even is language? There are so many different forms all over the world. Each has developed uniquely over time. Even the same language is spoken differently in various regions. And with all this, language is supposed to be how we communicate. Couple distinct thoughts with dialect that is not universally understood in the same manner, and our entire method of communicating is absolute chaos. Yet… it doesn’t seem like such. The literary critic who identifies as a deconstructionist will ignore any intentions by the author and purely analyze whatever is on the page. But what if we applied this to the whole world? If we ignored all the taught connotations and inferences based on context and instead just applied definitions as they are to words – with many words having multiple definitions – language, as we know it, just falls apart. Just look at “… Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears to see an example of this (no, I don’t actually listen to her; I just saw a really bad singing...

  These three works – Sophocles’s Oedipus the King , Sigmund Freud’s On the Oedipus Complex , and Sam Harris’s The Illusion of Free Will – were written in greatly differing time periods and with varying intents. However, they all answer that some, maybe not obvious, form of fate is the true determinant of human action, and that the concept of free will is merely a societal construct which fails to retain its purity in reality.        Sophocles’s Greek tragedy Oedipus the King questioned whether fate or free will governs humans. If fate, was Oedipus “born for pain,” so that he had to result in a single final state? Who was responsible? Was “Apollo quite enough” to lay such a fate on a mortal? If free will, was it Oedipus’s impulsive behavior of shunning Creon and his wife’s opinions which caused his ultimate demise?                 Being a Greek tragedian, Sophocles wrote, a...

  Are our lives determined by fate or free will? This is an age-old question, and one I have had my fair share of trying to answer – while being unsuccessful – in last year’s Socratic seminars. I thought that the Oedipus debate would finally bring some closure to matter, but to be quite honest, I just ended up being more confused. While preparing for the debate, I felt confident in the position that Oedipus was not a victim of fate. Though, after actually thinking after the debate about what the opposition had to say, I started to question my stance. Sure, I still stand by my argument that it was Oedipus’s realization of his family’s situation which caused his ultimate demise, and that this realization occurred because of his free will. But what about when he was a baby: was this fate? During the debate, our team refrained from touching heavily on this part of the timeline because we knew the winning arguments did not lie here. That is fine, since all we wanted was to win. Howeve...

     The technique of planting a seed and allowing it to grow throughout the progression of a work is simple to understand, but rarely recognized when practiced. A great example of such was noted in the analysis of The Great Gatsby that we read. The final paragraphs of the novel are some of the most famous in all of English literature, yet we often extract them from their place for further analysis without regard to the entire context: as if Fitzgerald wrote these words before the remainder of the novel and just randomly inserted them at the end. Each idea presented on the last couple pages was originally presented in the first chapter. The seeds were planted and naturally grew alongside the plot: each being intertwined with Gatsby’s fate.      The most common example of seeds is characters as we always analyze character development. However, we must also realize this development is rarely linear and immensely complicated – just as humans are. One does n...

Something I learned this week was how to effectively develop a character in literary work without writing a stereotypical narrative. Instead of having a chronological order, I can dissect the person – metaphorically – into events and perspectives that are crucial to portray. This was explained in great detail in The Atlantic’s article on storytelling. Even my choice novel, The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, utilized this technique by having each, seemingly unrelated, chapter represent a different trait of the main character. When an author decides to write a narrative where all the events are chronological and not independently and uniquely representative, the main purpose gets heavily distorted. In other words, the characters get watered down. This advice is especially helpful for college application essays: as I have to tell a story about myself, I need to do such efficiently without ignoring any vital elements. Furthermore, this method of storytelling connects to the...

     What is one’s identity? That is a fairly vague question as it differs with each person. Looking at Deming Guo, I believe his identity is his culture. I mostly say this because he had a coherent identity – regardless of whether it conformed to the expectations set by his mother (such as going past 8 th grade which I mentioned in my note page) – while he still lived with his mother, Leon, Vivian, and Michael. His early childhood was filled with cultural experiences and he had no reason to veer away from them or ignore their influence on him. However, when Deming becomes Daniel and lives with Kay and Peter Wilkinson, this connection to his background is broken. He is not even allowed to speak in Fuzhounese anymore (I mentioned how he must talk in English only once he lives with Kay and Peter in the notes). This causes him to be completely confused about who he is and where he belongs. Furthermore, Kay and Peter attempt to assimilate into their “American culture” by p...