Graded Recitation.
I’m sort-of-okay with it, I guess. It depends on whether I think my opinion is valuable in class, or if I feel like sharing something. It isn’t narcissistic, I just don’t feel like I could recite very well. The feeling when the room goes silent and everyone is just…just listening to you, that grips me. It makes my knees shake and my heart will tremble.
But as usual, life goes on and the world doesn’t give a damn whether you’re scared or not, you have your turn and it’s up to you, what you do with it. I don’t want to screw up my turn, especially since I love Young Adult Literature.
So, here’s my ranty essay. I’m betting all of this won’t even be mentioned tomorrow, it’s just a way for me to think out loud.
Compassion is a big word, usually thrown right up there with sympathy. It’s for good people, and it’s what villains need.
The dictionary states that compassion is a noun, “A deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.” According to the text in Campbell’s “The Hero’s Adventure,” suffering is life.
I don’t doubt it, because if you’ve been born in this world, you were born to suffer, to fight, to learn, to grow, and to change your world, and perhaps all of ours, if you’re strong enough.
Changing your own world is hard enough, but creating something strong enough to create impact for everyone else’s world? That’s amazing. That’s what literature is. Children’s, Young Adult and Adult Literature help to expand our worlds. We aren’t thinking about ourselves anymore, and the ego isn’t your center. It’s more of…you know other people are out there, and you’re willing to try and understand them.
Every book that we have read, and will be reading, that author wrote that particular book with a message. I don’t know if they ever expected that message to reach countries they’ve probably never heard about, or that it changed the lives of total strangers. We’re all human, and we are all suffering.
Compassion is certainly needed, especially in times when each person is faced with their own dragons, their own creeps.
For literary examples…this one is tough, isn’t it? I have some contenders…
- Jack (and the player controlling him) from Bioshock 1
- Jack and Big Daddy Delta (main characters from Bioshock 1 and 2, respectively) about the Little Sisters
- Karana and the animals from The Island of the Blue Dolphins
- Readers and the main character of whatever story they’re reading
Bioshock 1’s Jack is the main character. We never see his face, just his hands. And his hands have chain tattoos on them. As you progress through the game, there is a guy named ‘Atlas’ that will give you seemingly helpful tips, each beginning with the phrase, “Would you kindly.”
“Would you kindly grab that transistor radio?”
“Would you kindly find a camera?
“Would you kindly…”
“Would you kindly…”
If you were to use this phrase on me, I’d think you were a fan, because Jack is a brainwashed child, trained to do anything that begins with the phrase, ‘would you kindly.’
And you are unaware of this, all throughout the game. Until finally it is revealed, by Andrew Ryan, the person that created Rapture (an underwater utopia of sorts, where no man would be constrained by religion or government. It crumbles, ultimately.)
The order?
“Kill, would you kindly?” He gives you a golf club and you are forced to watch as your character continues to smack Andrew Ryan with it, until he dies.
The realization that you are not in control of your character hits home, very very hard. In games, I, personally am used to the idea that I control my own character. I control him. This character does what I want him to do, because it is of my own will.
Bioshock made me see that the only choice I really had was to put the disc in the PS3/xbox/PC and press ‘start.’
I definitely felt like an idiot. And the compassion comes in because no matter how much I hated Atlas for making me feel like an idiot (because it was, in some odd way him who was controlling my character, and indirectly, me) I couldn’t bear to kill him. Before I finished the game for the first time, I saved after Andrew Ryan’s death, turned off the xbox 360 and was very, very creeped out.
Now, Jack and Big Daddy Delta. They have a choice, whether to save or harvest Little Sisters, girls either kidnapped or taken away from their parents (or sent to ‘Orphanages’ where they are conditioned to become the Sisters.) they harvest ADAM from dead bodies (they’re given special powers via injecting plasmids, created from ADAM. There are people that take it too far and go crazy. These people are called Splicers. Drug addicts, to put it mildly.) and ride on top of Big Daddies.
Now, after taking down the Big Daddy, you have a choice. To save the Sister from the ADAM’s control (and hereby giving her a chance at a better life) to gain little–but they give you gifts later–ADAM, or you can harvest her, which, as it implies, killing her in order to gain more ADAM.
I saved them all because I couldn’t bear the thought of killing a little girl.
Karana from the Island of the Blue Dolphins. This girl was marooned after a ship with her whole tribe left her behind, because she dove into the water and swam back to get Ramo, her little brother. He was killed by wild dogs soon after.
While living in the Island all alone, she has pet birds and a dog. As time goes on, she feels compassion for the animals she hunts for food, and sees them as friends. Her feelings for sea otters, which her tribe have used for food and use their soft pelts for cloaks, changes when she saves one, who has babies.
Eventually she chooses not to hunt any animal on land, and when Aleuts (strangers) come to the island again looking for otter, she pretends not to know what they’re talking about. She chose to protect the otters and the other animals, who have been her family in the place of her tribe.
Readers and the main character from whatever story they’re reading. This is self-explanatory, but for a book to be a good book, you have to -care- about the main character. That’s what I think. And those are the books you will read, and re-read, and in some extreme cases, you will stop reading because you know a certain character you love will die.
Well, those are my choices for the graded recitation. I don’t know if I can think up of more, or if I’ll just use one of these…
Raïson d'etrê 