America is essentially naive. We take what we want and we take what we have for granted. If something is going to propel our status up, whether it's for wealth, our social lives, or just out of selfishness, we don't seem to even hesitate to act. As we observe in Raymo's piece, the act of selfishness and naiveté is what drives their decisions, and eventually, will lead to their own death. The piece takes place in 1987, which is only around 25 years from when we learned how harmful cigarettes actually were. Just like in Raymo's piece when the six-year-old girl "rubbed the glowing dust on her body" not knowing that the "beautiful dust" would "damage her living cells" (Raymo 212) and kill her, our society did something quite similar and acted out of same naiveté. We did the same thing with tobacco and cigarettes and blindly rushed into using them because "they were cool" and "the new thing". Then once it was already too late and much of society was hooked on tobacco, we discovered the grueling side effects that came with it-death, cancer, tumors, and much much more. Unfortunately, in our society, almost all of our decisions are made out of our selfishness and these ultimately lead to death and disaster. However even when the consequences hit us and we realize our wrongs, we still continue to make these naive decisions because we just can't help ourselves and we allow ourselves to believe that we NEED more. Overall, I believe that Raymo's piece serves as eye-opener to display to the readers that we need to learn from our mistakes because if we don't, we just get stuck in a never ending cycle of consequences and down falls.
The Stranger's Meursault, displays a pattern of behavior that is very uncommon in most literary works. While readers are usually able to relate to the main character and sympathize with the emotions that they are feeling, Meursault is the opposite. The way Meursault interacts and feels about certain situations and characters is quite strange, as if he's almost a stranger (hence the title) to the readers throughout the novel. We begin to wonder, is he a sociopath? Where are his emotions? Or why does he act this way? We wonder these questions because of how unfamiliar his character is to its readers. A term to somewhat describe Meursault's perspective and type of behavior would be nihilism. A nihilist is someone that does not believe in anything, has no loyalties, and ultimately believes that they, and society, have no purpose. Wow, that sure sounds like someone I'd love to be around! Meursault's detached personality erupts strange emotional behavior. For example, du...
Is your first sentence alluding to toilet paper?
ReplyDeleteI really like how you used Raymo’s piece to refer to how naive we are. I agree that we see what’s “cool” and partake in it and think it won’t do us no harm but our lack of knowledge eventually gets the best of us.
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