I wrote this essay for a class, staring shortly after the opening weekend of the movie. By that time, I had thought plenty about how Katniss Everdeen is a terrible heroin. But I still like the books. The original, printed version of this essay is much better. Because it has pictures of hot actors, but I hope you enjoy anyway.
My younger brother has been lied to. I have been lied to. My older brother has been lied to. My blonde brother has been lied to. My mother has been lied to.
The Freshman in my building have been lied to. The Sophomores in the cafeteria have been lied to. My fellow Juniors have been lied to. The Seniors, the ones working on their thesis, the one’s doing their internships, the one’s who still have a semester or more to go, have all been lied to.
We, as the human race, have been lied to.
I read the host a few years ago. Maybe four. I don’t really know. And, I don’t want to admit that I liked it, but I kind of did. But only kind of, Stephanie Meyer. Only kind of.
But today, through the lovely Tumblr, I came to know that they plan on making ‘The Host’ into a movie, to be released sometime early next year. I am okay with this. I was expecting this. But I wish it weren’t a movie. I wish it were a miniseries. I think it would be much better as a miniseries. Something longer than two hours. Something I can DVR. But not something on SyFy because, while I’ll admit that they have some really shitty shows (and, more recently, some really shitty spelling), they are still better than Stephanie Meyer.
Which is why, in my dream world, neither the book nor the miniseries would be written by Stephanie Meyer.
(On a somewhat unrelated note: Can we stop calling Stephanie Meyer a bad writer? Obviously, she is very good at the physical act of typing out stories because her books are fucking huge. She’s just a really bad storyteller.
I like Dr. Cline. Dr. Cline is a great person. And a great teacher. And just all around crazy, which I am starting to think is a requirement for becoming a college-level English teacher. But yesterday, Dr. Cline said something that upset me. Dr. Cline said that, as humans, we often look at the Holocaust in a way similar to how we look at pornography, that we watch it to see how horrible it is, thank God that we are not that horrible, and then move on.
I do not like this statement. I do not think that it is true about me, someone who proclaims that they favor Holocaust literature over all others. I think that, while this may apply to Dr. Cline’s life, Dr. Cline is not in a position to make assumptions about the lives and motives of university students.
I would not say that I love the Holocaust, because that just sounds terrible, but, I do kind of love the Holocaust, or at least studying the history of it. I enjoy the tragic beauty of the situation. I enjoy the amazing stories of survival, love, and sacrifice inspired by the horrible actions of others.
I see the Holocaust as a portrait of humanity, one which explores every facet of the human sole. Something which helps me to imagine the world completely.
Yes, I do watch movies and read books about the Holocaust and thank God that I am neither the “good” nor the “evil” of the second world war. Yes, I do, eventually more on. But I always revisit. And I always will. Because the Holocaust is a part of me. Not because my mother’s family had to flee Poland to avoid extermination. Not because of my strange fascination with Jewish culture. Not because my grandfather personally witnessed the attack of Pearl Harbor. But because I am human. Because I am part of the race that went to great lengths to kill and also to not be killed.
Because I am the Nazi officer who murdered children and also the child being murdered. Because I wore the gas mask but still choked on the gas. Because I am both Hitler and Churchill. Because I am both good and evil.
Because I am human.
I like women. Not in a sexual way. Or at least not that I am aware of. I like people. Not in a sexual way. Or at least not that I am aware of. And I believe that people should have equal opportunity, or, at least, as equal an opportunity as possible based on situation and circumstance. I also think that our language should reflect this equality, but it does not.
We need to do away with the term waitress. Hostess. Actress. Stewardess. Because men get to be waiters. Hosts. Actors. Stewards. And women get to be the feminized version of these, an idea of separate but equal. But they are not because these words and positions are simply female versions of ‘male jobs’. The male jobs came first. We just let the girls and women start doing them when they started complaining about wanting life outside of motherhood and wifedom. These words were not created out of equality. They were created to shut us up. And, dammit, if I’m going to be standing on my feet for an entire eight hour shift and putting up with shitty patrons or dressing in next to nothing just so the horny men of America will keep watching your shittily written thriller-drama, you could at least take that stupid -ess off the end of my job title.
Today in a spiritual formation class that I’m taking as a three-week intensive course at my quaint and too safe Christian university, we experimented with guided meditation. I love the idea of guided meditation. I love it a lot because I am a person who thinks about everything all at once and, therefore, become very distracted when I’m trying to silence myself. But, I am also a person who likes to make up stories. Like, all the time. I fall asleep to self-made movies playing in my mind. In fact, I can’t fall asleep without my crappy, independent productions. It’s like an addiction. A beautiful, sweet addiction that I will never share with anyone. Ever.
But anyway, we were told to picture a scene in our minds in which we meet Jesus on a path of some sort, hand Jesus an object, and then have a conversation with Jesus. This is how mine went:
