The Awakening Themes

This was seven hours worth of our lives. Enjoy. Or don't. We're not your mother.

Edna's Death

"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell."

-Buddha

     Throughout most of the story, one of Edna's main goals was to become independent, as evidenced by the joy she expresses while swimming and painting alone, and by the unhappiness she feels anytime she has to do things without being given options. She realizes she will never truly be free as long as she lives, and kills herself to escape the cage that is life itself. Though she is technically speaking free, this is neither a victory nor a defeat. 

     For someone to achieve victory, there has to be an opponent to win against. The only people who actively push Edna away from her goals are only in the novel for short periods of time, with the major example of this being her father attempting to force her to come to her sister's wedding. Her husband only puts up slight resistance due to the lack of care she gives towards the house. Since they were not "fighting" against her, it is impossible for her to have achieved victory against these characters. However, there is a single character in the novel that Edna has constant arguments with. 

     Throughout most of the novel, Edna is constantly asking herself what she should do and internally debating what she wants. As stated, her main goal is to become completely independent from men, yet she can not shake her love for the ones who want to have control. She doesn't want to give up Robert; she can't resist the temptation of Mr. Arobin. The only character in the novel she can truly defeat is herself. She both fails and succeeds in this regard, as her suicide brings about the end of her attachment for men who want control. As such, Edna's suicide is a stalemate: no one can win, and no one can lose.  

3 favorite Christmas Movies

     I'm usually not a big fan of Christmas movies; they just don't have enough explosions for my tastes. Personally, a lot of the movies I've seen are either mushy garbage or sequels (and therefore just plain garbage). That said, there are a few that don't make me want to throw my Christmas tree out a window.
     First on my list is How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey. The major reason I like it is the silliness throughout the entire movie. The scenes with the cat attacking the Grinch have always been hilarious to me, as have the scenes with the Grinch's dog Max. The animation style's fast pace and the color choices are also interesting to me.
     My next favorite Christmas movie is the classic Home Alone.  Though the sequels eventually got out of hand, the first (and depending on my mood, the second) movies are still fun to watch. The slapstick humor and overall silliness of the plot has always made me enjoy watching it, and look forward to seeing it a few times when the Christmas season comes around.
     My third favorite movie is the Polar Express. I know I said I hate mushy stuff, but my first time watching this movie was one of the relatively rare times everyone in my family wasn't completely freaking out about preparations for dinner or anything, so it gets a special place in my mind. Also, I saw it in the Imax at the Carnegie Science Center recently, so it gets some bonus points for style from that.
   

5 Favorite Blogs

     Most of my favorite blogs are just because they're either cool or cute, so don't expect anything super analytical or anything in this. I like cute animals, funny jokes, not-so-funny jokes, even less funny jokes, puns, and blogs about psychology, sociology, economics, and strange math things, because if you actually believe for even a second that I wasn't quite that nerdy then you are sadly mistaken. 

     My first favorite blog is http://cutest-cats.tumblr.com/. It's a blog with tons of photos of cute cats, which is awesome because cute cats are awesome. 

     My next favorite thing that is at least kind of a blog is explosm.net. It isn't technically a blog, but it's pretty funny and therefore also awesome. The Cyanide and Happiness youtube series is pretty popular, and these comics are the basis of those videos. Xkcd.com is another website like this, its jokes are just more complicated. 

     http://memesalldaylong.tumblr.com/ is a blog filled with memes. This is simply because memes are just the best things ever. Also, it's pronounced "mim" not "me me" and nothing anyone says will ever change that.

     http://buildingpc.tumblr.com/ is my next favorite blog because I have an unnatural love for computers. It has tons of PC building logs, and the component lists in most of them fill me with joy. Seriously though, some are garbage because people need to learn how bottlenecking works.

     The last and craziest blog that I like is http://illuminatiwatchdog.blogspot.com/, which is a blog explaining the methods the Illuminati is using to control the public. As an Illuminati-built android, it is extremely important that I collect data on which of our methods have been discovered, so that they can be replaced with less noticeable methods as soon as possible. 

     Most of these blogs (or blog-like things) are probably blocked on the school's network. Most of them are simply for humor or for relaxing after I get home from school. I realize that a lot of them are completely cheesy and/or generally stupid to most of you, but you can just deal with it. 

Gender Roles

     Men and women are equal in the same way that two plus two and three plus one are equal. However, humans have managed to divide themselves over differences much less noticeable than actual physical differences, so it's relatively easy to understand that men and women would separate themselves.
     Nature had a major impact on how gender roles formed; after all, only one of the two genders is incapacitated for months on end when in preparation for childbirth. It is typical in nature that the mother of an animal (most common in mammals) is far more attached to it than the father. This combined with the excessive power of the human brain, about which you should ask Professor Newcomer, led to many humans assuming that this should be the only role of women. Due to the need for the species to continue existing, this role has been extremely difficult to break, until recently, where the population's steady growth has lead to many women no longer feeling that this role is accurate.