Beowulf's (Awesomeness)^nth power

The first time I heard of Beowulf was on television. The commercial featured little clips, but of course the one that caught my eye was Angelina Jolie. When the movie came out, I never watched it. I never had the desire to, until most recently…my boyfriend urged me to watch it, because he felt (just like Mr. B) that Beowulf was an awesomely awesome fellow. I was hesitant and still put the movie off. One day, it just happened to be on FX and I was fixated on the story. At first, I thought the movie to be overly exaggerated. I thought it was meant to poke fun at Beowulf. Yet, I found some appreciation for it. So far reading this story and having the movie as a background template filters my imagination to believe the visual analysis rather than reading it.

When the Comitatus, followers of the king, meet in the Mead Hall, resembles a gathering of a frat house. Or a house party for people to relax and of course drink and play some beer pong. Hmm, I wonder if Beowulf would be beer pong king. Just a random thought. The epic poem would have created more appeal to me with more detailed imagery. If the poem entailed additional appearance descriptions of Grendel would have created a scarier monster, because Grendel seems kind of lame, I mean besides the fact that he eats people.

Beowulf plays a strong, combative character. It was admirable to know he swam for five days and five nights in excruciating icy water to later lose against Breca. Due to his awesomeness, the only reason why he lost the match was because he has done something even more great by slaying nine sea monsters. He challenges Unferth to do the same or fight against the mighty Grendel.

When Grendel eventually comes around and shows his face to Beowulf, Beowulf disarmors in order to have a fair fight with the mystical giant. Grendel has neither sword nor clothes, Beowulf finds it is only fair to do the same and fight with his own hands. But why do guys do that, why do they need to show off their manliness by stripping off their shirts. I understand why girls need to take off their hoop earrings and hair weaves, only so it doesn’t end up hurting them in the end. Grendel represents the defective misfits and rebels of society. The ones who love to insinuate havoc and trouble. It seems like Beowulf finds the passion to rid the “bad” out of the society to maintain order.

Beowulf encompasses an ideal heroic figure. With his big muscles and his eloquence to speak, he resembles the ideal man figure to look up to. He’s like Batman and Superman. He plays the dominant male figure in slaying all the bad monsters and saving the day. Could Beowulf be interpreted or compared to a God? He seems to play a distinctive role in saving people’s lives. Or he just likes to be compared to a hunter shooting a buck and hanging its head in his living room as a trophy of triumph?

WC=522

Wife of Bath! Go Females!

The three ideal states of a woman are virginity, chastity and marriage. All three ideals are opposing aspects of the wife of Bath. The prologue’s length seems long, which may indicate that the woman is talking, because the of course women always talk long and forever as it seems. From this prologue, this indicated that she is an extrovert woman. Although she may be classified as a “black widow,” there must be some logic behind her reasoning. She plays as the dominant figure of the story. She wants to hold the reigns of the horse by playing the con artist, aka the infamous strippers of Sin City. As she discusses about her relationships in the past, it previews an insight about her age, as she loses her train of thought. Yet I find her to be an empowering woman figure, because she stands for what she wants. She seems like a “suga mama,” yet it only means she wants security. The question was “why did she rip the three pages out of the book-about wicked wives?” She did it out of anger! Why would a wife be happy reading stories about horrible wives? Not because she was trying to hide something ugly about herself to the fifth husband, it was because she most likely believed the stories would alter her lover’s mind into leaving her. She didn’t want him to leave; because of course she wanted something from him. The ability for a woman to seduce a man is an inherited skill any woman could possess. She knows how to trick men into giving her things. It’s a win-win scenario, the man gives her something she wants or needs and she will give him a woman’s ideals.

Why is that men can have several wives, yet women cannot do the same with having several husbands? At the time, women were considered “objects.” Objects just like animals, property and houses. At the time it was acceptable to “beat” women, because women represented the man’s “property.” Is that why some women are evil? Maybe so, yet thank goodness, this isn’t the way anymore. The world would not revolve if there wasn’t some dilemma to deal with. Although she manipulates men and upholds a strong and brute personality, she still embraces her age when she reveals some sympathetic and fascinating character about herself.

Throughout the story, she brings attention about her habit of lying. Which may entail questioning about her perspective being truthful. Her brute personality may show some aspect of being a phenomenal actor. I mean she is a con artist after all. She claims to be an expert of marriage after five marriages, which may show a fallacy in her claim. Although she was married five times doesn’t mean she knows everything about marriage. It only means she has gained “experience.” She is mesmerized by her fifth husband, because he is different from the other four. He knows her tricks and he cannot be fooled by her art. She claims to love him, and that the previous four were purely married for money. This reminds me of what my aunty tells me all the time; to marry a man for his money, nothing else. She believes it is important to play the trophy wife when the man comes home to treat his lady. But I don’t follow that, she’s crazy and single. Yet I do understand what she claims about men. All she wants is security, which seems to resemble the wife of Bath.

WC: 583

"Swollen Feet"

Although I have read this story before, I still find it interesting and of course ridiculously amusing. Oedipus plays as the cocky leader and, he takes the city’s plague under account in order to make the citizens happy. In doing so he needs to purge the murderer of king Laius. Funny thing is this story follows the aspect of dramatic irony. From the beginning, the audience finds the story to be oblivious, yet we need to be in the state of willful disbelief, and allow ourselves to follow the plot of the story and find that in the end, Oedipus is indeed the murderer. It’s kind of like the CSI shows. I’ve been hooked on the CSI: Las Vegas. The outline of the story starts out as “who is the murderer?” and all these sequence of events lead to the obvious ending. Or so we think…dun dun dun!

In class, there was discussion about how the Oedipus was faced with fate and he was eventually going to end up at how the oracle’s “vision” expected it to be. Although Oedipus was oblivious at himself, playing the role as the king of the city, I believe he made a morally great decision in attempting to solve the plague of the city. Even though the prophet told Oedipus that he doesn’t need or want to know the truth of his parenthood, I think that’s a situation that most people may not be able to resist. Every time a close friend says something like “Oh! You don’t wanna know,” I can’t resist, but keep insisting on finding out what it is that I don’t want to know. The prophet still was granted the choice to tell or not to tell Oedipus his knowledge, yet he did. If he chooses the path on not telling Oedipus, would Oedipus eventually find out the ugly truth of his being? Perhaps, only because it was fate, but if this was the case, then the story would take longer than the 24 hour story time line.

In The Incredibles, when Frozone had two conflicting responsibilities, he still manages to counterbalance each responsibility. He knows it his grand duty to attend both saving the day and his wife, yet again, the wife should know that although she plays the utter importance in her husband’s life, she needs to remember his responsibilities and condone him for the greater good. Once he saves the day, he shall stroll along his path of ice and attend to his majestic woman. If I were faced with the duty to help save other lives versus attending to my significant other, I would need to take action and face the fact that I could be an INCREDIBLE J Or just simply justify both aspects to be equally important. The question is which would be accomplished first.

Maybe another way of thinking about the situation would be comparing or considering circumstances through a domino effect. If Frozone needs to save the day, in order to make the citizens happy and then go safely home afterwards to make his lady happy, then gosh darn, he better go save the day first and come home as soon as possible to attend his lovely woman. Everyone, or mostly everyone, experience these excruciating conflicts every day. Given several choices to choose from staying home to study for an exam or to go on a date with a boyfriend/girlfriend in order to make them happy are conflicting responsibilities that we may face every day. Having the mobility to execute and prioritize duties all depends on the character of the person. For the record though, if I were put in Mrs. Frozone’s Wife’s shoes, I would say “The world could wait, you need to attend to me first.” I think any wife may feel that way, maybe the exception of military wives....

WC: 640

Fate or Conspiracy?

What is fate? According to dictionary.com, fate as a noun is something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; the universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably prescribed; inevitably predetermined; destiny. The big discussion in class was how to intertwine the basic principles of Daoism and The Matrix movie with the ideals of how belief equals reality, or does it? Although it seems to be fate that encompasses the presence of Neo, he was still granted the ability to choose. He had a choice to pick the red pill or the blue pill. Yet, what may be debatable was whether or not Neo was really the One. Even though Neo was told that he was the One, he was subtly denying it, or I guess being the reluctant hero.

Somewhere I’ve heard this philosophy, B.E.A.R. philosophy. First one must Believe in oneself, and then one must have enough Energy to take Action and get Results. Since Neo was reluctant at first, he never believed himself to begin with, yet with the Oracle’s ambiguous statements, Neo finally found the passion inside himself to reveal his ability to be the One. The fundamental element of Daoism is oneself to believe. It is what he, she or I will or will not believe. Like what one of my fellow classmates stated, Neo was given the choice to pick the red or blue pill, so picking the red pill gave the person a clear mind, an open mind. In order to believe something so trivial, one must have a clear, open mind to evaluate and understand all things, to everything that nature may bring, or even what our destined fate may or may not be. In other words, Daoism is a belief that someone can follow. It is another way to choose the life we choose to live. Some people live as atheists as others as God worshippers.

Following quotes from Mr. B:

-          “Daoism has no solid answer.” At first, I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by this, but I think it means that although I may think this way about Daoism, doesn’t mean it is concrete, because Daoism is an abstract idea, that anyone may have a different perspective towards the idea of Daoism.

-          “As far as the first film goes, the real world could actually be a nice place and Morpheus could just be fooling Neo in the same way he claims the matrix is doing. Think on that for a minute.” I never thought of it like this, I was stuck on  one-dimensional analysis that the Matrix is a forbidden place, maybe because of Lawrence Fishburne plays such a convincing character, who would deny him?! Although this plays a plausible solution to Morpheus’ character as the Greek god of dreams, the movie would have turned out to be way different, even if Will Smith was asked to play Neo. Morpheus is a rebel and he wants another person to take the position as savior as he will claim to be the one whole guides them and plays as the mentor of the mavericks.

-          “Going back to Gawain, does he wait because he's scared, because he wants to defer to knights he sees as better than himself, or because he doesn't want to be a hero at all? Or is there another way of looking at his actions?” Gawain was probably scared; I mean who wouldn’t be with a big. Buff green guy asking to play a game of head chopping. As King Arthur attempts to take the Green Knight’s proposal, Gawain saw this as the opportunity to save his uncle; he most likely did not want to see any harm to his greatness. Perhaps it was an act of chivalry or an act of suggested obligation since he is family, no one else brave would stand up to the plate to take the ridiculous challenge.

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