Alankar's Blogs

  Is it natural to be indifferent in the worst situations? Is it natural to just not care about your surroundings and just carry on with life? Both of these questions are relevant to Meursault as he consistently seems indifferent to the atmosphere around him. Whether it be Marie confessing her love for him and inquiring about marriage, or Raymond detailing his situation with his mistress, Meursault shows no signs of true care. At first glance, this would seem to be in complete opposition with human nature, as we are very perceptive and have immediate judgements – if not any visible reaction – to everything.   However, Meursault still remains conscious of his uniqueness; he accepts that he no longer analyzes himself, and – whether we openly admit it or not – with each person seeing themselves as the center of world, he could no longer analyze the rest of the world. Though it is unclear at this moment as to why he is incapable of such normal behavior, his whole narrativ...

‘When am I going to use this again in life?’ This is probably the most asked question amongst students, and in at least high school, you are often told to just remember the material for the test. In AP classes, this test is usually the AP test. But what if I’m not even taking the AP test? Then what am I supposed to do with what I learn? Some of my friends from 11 AP dropped to regular English in 12 th grade because they didn’t need more English credit and wanted an easier class. Makes sense. However, I stayed but didn’t even plan on taking the 12 AP test. When my friends asked why I stayed since I wasn’t taking the AP test, I had absolutely no answer. In any other year, I would say “GPA,” but I’ve already submitted my transcript to a lot of colleges. And even if I later have to send my senior year first semester grades, I can’t just assume I’ll end up with an A in English. I can’t grind English like I would in other classes as it is literally the most ungrindable subject. But as...

In Sophocles’s Antigone , Antigone wants to bury one of her brothers who was ordered not be buried by Creon. She is not afraid of death in the case that she is caught. It’s a pretty straightforward plot even though there are multiple themes that present themselves through Creon and Antigone’s conversations. But there is a larger idea in the story which is quite ironic when put into context – no, I did not talk about this in my essay, though I should have. Would you really risk everything just for a noble act? Probably not. An easy example of this came up in a Socratic Seminar from my last year’s English class. We were talking about Nazi Germany, and someone asked if we would help the Jews – or any other victims – if we were a German safely living in that area. Most of us said no, and Mrs. Valentino literally asked “what is wrong with all of you?” as she was astonished with our answer. I’m not trying to call her out or anything, but she really shouldn’t have been surprised. In hin...

  *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...