Death

Death to me is a release from your physical body.  I think that when you die you either go to heaven or hell depending on the choices that you have made in your life.  If you do end up going to heaven I think that you can watch over the people that you love just like Thornton Wilder said in Our Town.  In I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died Emily Dickinson said that you will be alone in your room when you die.  In the poem the only thing that she heard when she died was a fly which was the only thing she had since her family already left her.  When you think of a fly you think that it is a horrible disgusting thing which death also is.  The next poem that we read was The Dead by Billy Collins.  In his poem he was saying that the dead don't want you to see them because when you "see" them you are by yourself mourning for them.  They want you not to hold on to the connection between you and him but to let go of it because you are grieving.  I agree with this because if you were dead you wouldn't want people thinking about the past and grieving over you even if it was 10 years ago and they still haven't let go.  The last poem we read was Chicken Salad by Mark Halliday.  In his article he said that he would get his dad something to eat to be his last meal that would bring him pleasure.  This is what they do in prison before somebody dies so that they have their final meal.  This final meal will probably be their favorite meal which will give them pleasure.  But, in chicken salad his dad didn't want the chicken salad because he was already gone.  His dad was on the verge of life and death which is why he didn't want his favorite treat.  These were the three poems that we read in class and they all relate to act 3 in Our Town which is all about death.  Even though they are all similar they all have their own message to take from them.

Love and Happiness

In our English class we are reading the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder.  We are on act 2 of the book which covers the marriage between George and Emily.  After the class read the act we had to make our own opinions on love marriage and also read poems of the same topic.  The poems that we read about love and marriage were true love by Wislawa Szymborska and also To my dear and loving husband by Anne Bradstreet.  These two poems had completely different opinions on love and marriage then the other.  In true love it says "Lookat the happy couple. Couldn't they at least try to hide it, fake a little depression for their friends sake?  Listen to them laughing- its an insult."  In this poem the author despises people that are in love or just any couple in general that is happy.  I feel that this is completely wrong because being in love is a great thing and seeing other people happy should make you happy, not angry.  She also says that "True love. Is it really necessary?  Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence, like a scandal in life's highest circles." This is also false in my opinion because like the other one love is an important thing and should be treasured by everyone not hated.  I don't know why Wislawa Szymborska has so much hatred in her heart but it might be because she is jealous or she recently broke up with her boyfriend.  The other poem that we read was To my dear and loving husband which was a very short poem but filled with her opinion on love.  The poem starts out with her saying that "if ever two were one, then surely we.  If ever man were loved by wife then thee; if ever wife was happy in a man, compare with me ye woman if you can."  In this opening she is saying that if two people were a couple and they both loved each other then they won't separate for other people.  I agree with To my dear and loving husband more because they agree with my view on love and marriage.  I think that love is a "sacred" thing and should be treasured by both the husband and the wife which Anne Bradstreet made her poem about.  I also think that love should be infinite and everlasting even after death which was also stated in her poem.  These are some of the viewpoints of love and marriage of 2 poems and myself and you can see the differences with them.

Happiness

In these three different articles, Happy Like god, The joy of less and also Want to be happy be grateful and all three of them had different viewpoints on how to be happy.  In the first article that we read, Happy like god by: Simon Critchley, his view on how to be happy.  He said our lives are filled with distractions such as cell phones, car alarms and commuter woes.  He said to be happy you need to be in a complete state of reverie without any of the distractions listed above.  He said if anyone is happy, then one imagines that God is pretty happy, and to be happy is to be like God which was the main point made in his article.  The next article that we read was The joy of less by: Pico Iyer.  In his article his main statement was that happiness isn't necessarily having a lot of stuff it might be having less.  In his article he said when he goes to Burma, Morocco or El Salvador he "noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I'd grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day."  This shows how easy everyone living in the United States has it compared to places like these.  The last opinion of happiness came from a Ted Talk with David Steindl-Rast.  The main point of his view was that some people don't have everything but they are happy because they are grateful because of what they DO have.  Out of the three different views of happiness I agree with this one the most because I agree with mostly all of the points made during his presentation.  The best and most important thing that David Steindl-Rast stated in his presentation was that "happiness doesn't make us grateful, gratefulness makes us happy."  These are just one of the many reasons that I agree with him.  All of these three people have different views on happiness and although I agree with some of the things all three say, I agree with David Steindl-Rast Ted talk the most.