Extra! Extra! Read All About It! A boy bombs Birdville, USA To discover that he already did that Twenty years ago! Poo-tee-weet?

How about a blog entry that involves less concentration on the Big Question than the others because as I have discovered, I've branched this question into far too many intracacies and optional outcomes that it has spun into a web of criss crossing ideas in search of too many variables for even an extended matrix. I know I am lacking to derive a competant essay out of this question anyway. The difficulty is finding a question to actually discuss. Hopefully, this will help me pinpoint something. Anyway, to the novel mobile! So, I appreciated the messages out of the novel more than the novel itself. If the novel had been written in the fashion of the last chapter and the several pages before, I would have enjoyed it much more. Also, if the style carried on further into a longer chapter, that would have been better. I feel it ends abruptly. Still, perhaps that is all that needed to be said at the end of the novel. Ha! I now think about my Big Question and realize that after the foreword of being a bit off-topic here, I find Slaughterhouse-Five to have perhaps the most straightforward answer to my question. Billy Pilgrim acts as he is supposed to. Rather than free will, people just act as they are supposed to. So, Billy Pilgrim obviously does not act of his own intentions. Simply, he acts according to how the universe is supposed to run. Now I am thinking of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when Earth explodes and the main character ends up on Earth Mark 2. There is the moment when he is asked if he would change anything, and he doesn't. Some random person doesn't change the world when he has the opportunity. Things are supposed to go as they are. Does that deny free will though? I don't know. I feel from the Tralfamadorian perspective, the discussion of free will is negligible. So, why am I asking this question at all? Does it matter if people act of their own intentions? It just occurred to me that to commit an act, someone must first intend to commit the act. Regardless if someone is working for someone else's ultimate aims and goals, if they are intending to act, then that is their intention. I guess the only depending factor is if they realize what the endgame is regarding their intention and then their act. Case closed. People do act of their own intentions. The question: do they realize whether or not they are working forward their own goals? And then that is a pretty straightforward question.

OPPORTUNITYISNOWWHERE is to BELOVED as...

The difficulty in relating my big question to this book is that it is so supernatural. I do not know how to account for ghosts and ethereal beings into my thinking here, yet if I take it as the widely unpopular view of Beloved being a product of Sethe and then taking that further into Sethe and Beloved being one and the same body but with competeing concsiousnesses, I can maybe work with that. On another note, Denver certainly expresses acting of her own intentions. She wants to help/save her mother. The way she does that is through the community, which if considering the societal hive mind I have been making mention of in my other posts, the community does not serve this role for Denver. Thus, the community can be the "good guys." Denver's "society" is 124 and its inhabitants, which she resists and then moves on off the porch as an individual. Sweet! Now, back to Sethe. This is complicated. Sethe seems stained by the past. She wants to go back to part of it; the life she had with Halle at Sweet Home, but then again she does not because of the slavery and the schoolteacher. This conflict of weighing whether or not the decisions she made were for better or for worse seems to be Sethe's conflict through the book. Viewing Beloved as a psychological enemy, Sethe is fighting against herself in trying to decide what "herself" is and what her intentions are. Paul D also searches for "self" in the sense of the fight between what and whether or not he is animalistic or human. So, for that purpose, I do not know if they apply to my question. I mean, how can one argue if they are working for or against their own intentions if they themselves do not know what they are? Still, I do suppose they both make amends right at the end and find love. So, technically they do act with individual interests in mind, but then there are no societal interests to consider acting against them at that point. Thinking about Stamp Paid and his questioning of his own intentions as well when he spreads gossip, I feel now that I may have to reword my question to include psychological barriers within "own personal intentions." I do not know. Perhaps, this just is not a question that can accurately address this topic, but I definitely feel that the closest thing in this novel to the question would be the fight to find out what one's "own personal intentions" are.

When A Stranger Calls... don't answer the phone.

The Stranger focuses on a character who leads to a critical moment of his life by not acting. Meusault prefers to let other people make driving decisions as opposed to acting of his own. The problem though is that not until the end before the coming of his death does he consider any opinions about his life and about others. So, while Meusault sits back so as not to disturb the peace, which is conformity (or is it?), it is possible that he has no other preference than to let that go on. So, the wants of conformity and society are synonymous with his. Is conformity sitting around and letting the world pass? I don't know. Does society want us to sit around or do we all act accordingly. I suppose killing someone is out of conformity, but then killing happens every day and society continues to go on. So, has society accepted killing. Mind you, "killing is still considered :"bad" but there is a due process for murder. Also, there is a set societal system set up for how killing should be interpreted and handled. On the flip side though, it seems in this society the killing is ignored and he is convicted upon the grounds that people do not like him for what he did to his mother. I feel he goes along with society rather than acting for or against it for a while, but afterwards he goes into his own feelings, contradicting society's views.

(Crime and Punishment) Two for One Deal! A Full Heaping of Crime with a Side Order of Guilt Please!

Shabooyah!! Crime and Punishment certainly verifies that people will act of their own accord with Rodya's thesis and murders, and what I like even more is that Rodya not only works for himself, he is on a journey to work with himself so he can find himself. A journey of self-discovery and understanding is much different from fighting for your ideals against society. While he does avoid the investigations and breaks the law, Rodya really doesn't fight against society as much as he does not go along with society's expectations. Only when he has satisfied himself, he admits to the murder. If that's not acting foremost of his own accord, I do not know what is. In addition, Dunya refuses the marriage even though that is what she ought to have done. Then of course when Rodya is in jail, he still defies society by not sulking and being content in the dungeon or otherwise spiteful at his standing. Rather, he undergoes further personal development. Still, something I realized is that I do not know the basis for Russian society very well, and something to consider is that Rodya and Dunya both were not raised in St.Petersburg, which means they are possibly products of another society.

Henry aka Hal aka Henry V aka Hamlet Who Actually Acts

Hal really has two phases in the play. Initially, he is child-like. He wants to please his father blindly, without coming up with ideas of his own. In Hal's case though, he has two fatherly influences. King Henry IV and Falstaff each encourage starkly contrasting ideals for Hal to live by. Hal moves to please each ideal set and cannot due to difference between the two sets, which naturally leads to conflict with each father. Initially, I was going to say that Hal works to please his fathers' intentions rather than his own, but I suppose at this point, he is in that child-like state and his intentions are to please his fathers. So, I guess he is trying to work toward his intentions by appeasing his fathers' intentions. The critical thing though is that he doesn't please his fathers by trying to work on two opposite goals at once. So, he changes his approach. Moving past the child phase, Hal realizes that he needs to employ parts of each ideal set and balance one with the other to be successful in life and in pleasing his fathers, which he does successfully. So then, Hal consistently works towards his own intentions. His own intentions just happen to be pleasing others by appeasing their ideals. At first, a => b =/> c. Then, a => d => c. (a being appeasing his fathers ideals, b and d being how he goes about pleasing his fathers, and c being pleasing his fathers, which is his personal intention) In the end, Hal successfully works towards his personal intention. That is unless you look at the situation as Hal initially working towards the ideals and intentions his fathers have imposed upon him in which case he would not be acting on his personal intentions but those of his fathers. Then later, he creates his own ideal set and works towards it, thus acting of his own intentions. Either way though, in the end, he does satisfy his own intentions.

Now, that being said, it requires that Hal does in fact want to be a great leader who balances teaching and learning because if he truly wants to live his life with Falstaff in a tavern, he acts on what is best for society rather than for himself. Though still (I just keep going on and on), what one wants and what one needs are two different things. Meh. Just to clear the score, let's say that his goals to either be a great leader or live with the rifraf are two need-based intentions. Then, to answer the Big Question, it all depends on if Hal truly wishes for the crown or the tavern. While most of the play suggests he wants to be king, the banishment of Falstaff suggests Hal has longing for his former lifestyle and in fact in a soliliquoy (pardon my spelling) he also states that he dislikes his job as king. Perhaps, Hal is truly happy in the tavern. But then, are personal intentions want or need based? Is a person fully aware of their personal intentions? I do not know.

Oedipus!!!!!! (aka Super Potato)

Oedipus does act for the greater good. So, one would think the answer to the question would be no, but Oedipus satisfies his own intentions and values at the same time. Besides the eye-gouging and his wife dying and being cursed from birth and..... this isn't going the direction I wanted it to. Anyway, I was going to say that aside from all the bad stuff, Oedipus is actually pretty awesome in the respect that he is able to satisfy the will of society and his own will, but then again, his intentions are those established by the society. So, are they his own or are they society's? Well, he essentially willed the society to be what it is as he is king. Did he not?

I am having excessive difficulty here because I am lacking information. If he established the societal values, then he acts both of his own intentions and of those of the society, but if he adapted to the societal intentions, then he does not act of his own intentions... or does he? If he adapted, that would mean that his intentions are now equivalent to those of the society, and therefore, he does satisfy the intentions of society and of himself. Yet, if he did not adapt but simply put on a facade in order to please the people or just because he believed that would be the most effective way to lead, then he does not act of his own intentions but of society's. Overall though, the 'Thought' aspect of Oedipus appears to suggest that he truly believes what he is decreeing as his intentions. So, he does act of societal intentions, and by doing so, he satisfies his own intentions. (Even though he doesn't act in self-preservation, that does not mean that he is not satisfying his own intentions because his intention is to do what is best for the people of Thebes.)

The Big Question

1. Do people act according to their own integral, personal intentions? I find this question interesting because I believe a number of individuals do things in order to please their surroundings rather than act of their own accord. Thus, they become one of the many rather than pave their own individual paths. I feel that most of the time, I attempt to distinguish my self; ideas, personality, and decisions. But there are instances where I find myself holding back so as to not disturb the balance. If I insult someone or otherwise attack that individual because of their ideas or actions, it very well may throw out any opportunity to befriend or even have contact with that individual (due to the fact that the society has evolved to support the run into a corner and cry response -by responding with money, opportunity, and attention.) Anyway, the society has come to the conclusion that insulting anyone is terrible and criticism should be kept on the inside. "If you have nothing positive to say, don't say anything at all." Bah!

2. The Sun Also Rises greatly supports this question through all the social interaction. There are a couple moments when Jake reflects on how he does not actually enjoy spending time with his 'friends' and does not like them very much. Yet, he continues to remain in close contact with them. It is absurd. He is afraid to do anything that would disturb the flow. When he has a chance to have a real friend, who he meets while fishing, Jake does not go to any lengths to get in contact with the man but reflects on how a good time he had with him.

4. In AP US History, the class read about and discussed Anne Hutchinson. She did act of her own accord. She had many followers. She was leading many new ways of thinking and challenging old ways of how things were handled in government and religion. Now, this example would flat out answer my question with a big "YES!!!!!!" But the difficulty here is that other individuals within the society get close to hanging her, and she does end up exiled, which in that time and place was pretty darn close to a death sentence. Perhaps it would be better to verse the question with 'humanity' rather than 'people,' but people make up humanity so...... Anyway, the point is that it is obvious that the behavior to act of your own intentions rather than act within society is not condoned by any means.