"What place does a dream have on one's life?"

We all have dreams. Whether it is to become a doctor or to become a star on Broadway, we all want things, and we dedicate our lives and our time to fulfill them. The goal, of course, is to achieve,to overcome obstacles and become successful. Our visions and dreams drive us to try time and time again until we succeed. But what happens after we do succeed? What happens after we get the job or when we receive the letter of acceptance to our school of choice? Everyone likes to believe that the answer is eternal happiness. Once we achieve our goals, we are content and blissful. But this is often not the case. Unless our dream is fulfilled the moment before we die, we all face life after success, and during this life we continue to want more and more and to have the desire for perfection, which leads to a sad truth; simply fulfilling our dream is never enough.


Gatsby experiences success when after five long years, he finally finds his way back into Daisy's heart. They fall back into love with each other and Daisy agrees to leave Tom for Gatsby. Gatsby's vision to be with Daisy is fulfilled and his dream comes true, but like many who succeed, this simply is not enough to make him happy. He needs more. Not only does he need Daisy, he also needs her to convince herself and others that she never loved Tom. Gatsby's longtime vision makes him hungry for everything to turn out perfectly, and consequently when Daisy says that she did once love Tom, but that she loved Gatsby too, her words "seem to bite physically into Gatsby" (133). Gatsby cannot grasp the idea that not everything worked according to his desire, and at that point he loses Daisy.

We like to believe that success makes us happier and accomplished, but often success drives us mad; it makes us obsess over perfection. Desire for success can motivate us, but after fulfilling our dreams we are never quite satisfied. Like Gatsby, we are accustomed to need our visions to work out perfectly. Whether the person who got accepted into a top college or Gatsby himself, we all have the desire to want more, and desire can often be costly.

Throughout 11 AP, we have read many books and passages about women in society. In The Scarlet Letter, we witnessed an adulteress in a Puritan society, which shames her and deems her a sinner. In The Bluest Eye, we witness Pecola's as well as other black females' oppression that results from the judgments of a society ruled by white beauty standards. In both instances, women are oppressed by societies that are dominated by beliefs held during specific time periods. Within the first couple of chapters, it becomes apparent that The Great Gatsby is yet another novel that, like The Scarlet Letter and The Bluest Eye, emphasizes how women are oppressed in a community where unfair standards persist.
In The Great Gatsby, it becomes apparent that Daisy's husband, Tom, is cheating on her. In today's society, we would be surprised if a woman were to stay in a relationship with someone who is unfaithful, but in a setting during the period of Modernism, where people began to become more and more materialistic, the reason for Daisy's choice to stay with her husband is quite evident. Daisy reveals her knowledge that women in the 1920s are oppressed. She tells Nick that the best thing a girl can be in the world is "a beautiful little fool." By expressing her belief that women can only have value if they possess beauty, she reveals that knowledge and wisdom are irrelevant; the only trait that matters is being beautiful, for men will choose to marry those who are. I began to question Daisy. She is aware of the shameful idea that women are seen as objects of physical attraction just like she is aware of her husband's cheating, yet she never feels the need to leave Tom. As quick I was to hate Tom, with his "supercilious manner" and his hubris, I realized that it is not just Tom's fault that Daisy lives an unhappy life, but rather the materialistic nature of women during the time period of Modernism and Daisy herself. The only thing that keeps Daisy in her relationship with Tom is her obtainment of the luxuries that Tom offers. She is comfortable with her lifestyle because she has been given riches.
 
After asking myself why Daisy can't just leave Tom, I began to realize that Tom, whose riches are shared with Daisy, isn't forcing the relationship to continue, but rather Daisy's need to live a high-end lifestyle. Like many women during the 1920s, Daisy's life revolves around the riches that are provided by her husband. The influence of materialistic needs during Modernism keep Daisy trapped in her unhealthy relationship and oppressed women like her.

In a society where everyone has their own perceptions and opinions,the use of punctuation is changing in order to more effectively convey ideas and creativity. The freedom from punctuation dogmas give writers the ability to express their emotions and perceptions more effectively. Whether using simple applications of punctuation, less common types of punctuation for excitement, or eliminating punctuation as a whole, a writer uses punctuation to reflect tone and emotion. In fact, varied applications of punctuation is often used depending on different writing styles. Emily Dickinson, an acclaimed poet, support the notion that people should have the freedom to apply punctuation to their individual pieces of writing. The different types of writing that a writer utilizes, poetry in Dickinson's case, is a freedom that every author has. Dickinson believes that her freedom to write without being limited to certain aspects of language allows her to "dwell in Possibility." She is free to explore different types of writing that strays from typical grammar rules and allows her to discover infinite possibilities. Her type of writing avoids the confines of punctuation rules and is "more numerous of Windows." Dickinson believes that her methods of writing poetry allow her to see more just like a window allows people to see more. These "windows" allow her to look out, see, find, and discover more with her style of writing. Not once in her piece does she use a period, a semicolon, or a comma. Rather, she separates each of her thoughts with dashes to elaborate on how her writing and her use of language separates herself from the binding rules of punctuation and how it truly allows her to dwell in possibility.

"The damage done was total. She spent her days, her tendril, sap-green days, walking up and down, up and down, her head jerking to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear. Elbows bent, hands on shoulders, she flailed her arms like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile effort to fly. Beating the air, a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach-could not even see-but which filled the valleys of the mind."
This exert, as well as the entirety of the novel, has been an emotional roller coaster for me. This book is one of few that has changed my perception of the world, and this paragraph offered a range of dismal emotions for myself.
In this passage, we witness the future Pecola, I had to look up the definition of a tendril, which is illustrated below.

The moment I saw an image of a tendril, I couldn't help but relate the endless curls of the plant with Pecola's life. Walking back and forth in an infinite cycle, Pecola lives a life of emptiness and lack of love. Consequentially, she is both mentally and physically drained. I disconvered the most grieving instance when Morrison describes Pecola as a bird that fails to fly. Pecola, who has always wanted to be beautiful, who yearns to have blue eyes, but is raped and shunned from society, is incapable of escaping the judgement and racism of others. She is unable to achieve her "blueness," her beauty, and while she has wings, she is grounded. Her life was not set to fail, but her circumstances and society's loathing of blacks lead to her downfall. And although none of her oppression was her own fault, the hatred that whites have for blacks and the self-hatred that the blacks have of themselves lead Pecola to become a flightless bird who has no one to love and support her.

This week we discussed different characters in The Bluest Eye. We analyzed several black characters whose age wealth varied. Throughout the novel, blacks encounter racial prejudice and other hardships that target them because of their race.

One of these characters is Pecola. She is teased at school and, being a black girl, is at the bottom of the demographic hierarchy. Her family is poor and her parents often neglect her. In contrast, we also are introduced to the character of Geraldine, who comes from a community where black women strive to manifest an identity epitomized by white standards. She constantly worries "about the edges of [her] hair" and is taught about the "careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners";however, she is incapable of experiencing love in her life with her husband and even her own son. Her life, like Pecola's, is filled with rejection and inability to fit the standards of society. 

However, Pecola and Geraldine are very different in the sense that Geraldine, unlike Pecola, is a wealthy adult. 

What struck me as sad is that in The Bluest Eye, all of Morrison's characters experience oppression. I came to a disappointing realization about society in the novel; if you are black and poor, you lose; if you are black and rich, you still lose. The oppression that the characters experience made me feel a sense of hopelessness. I wondered what the cause of this could have been and after pondering for some time, I realized that the oppression isn't due to wealth or age, but rather the white standard of beauty that blacks have.

One particular part of the novel that I found disheartening was when Pauline, a black woman, calls her own daughter ugly. Like the rest of society, even Pecola's own mother marks her as someone who is ugly. Even blacks in the novel have succumbed to white beauty standards. In a society where being black automatically deems one as ugly and less superior, there is no way to live a life free of oppression because of genetics: something that no one has control over.