Author: ErikaY

Everyone knows that feelings are perfectly natural and okay, but they’re also very important to have in order for a society to function well. Shirley Jackson demonstrates this in her short story “The Lottery”, in which every year, a small town picks by lottery one person to stone to death.

In the story, a woman named Tessie Hutchinson is selected in the lottery. When she is selected she fights it, saying that it isn’t fair and isn’t right. Everyone, even her family, is deaf to her protests and proceeds to stone her anyway, no qualms about it, because it’s a tradition. This shows that these people are detached from the concept of death and the feelings that surround it, and the emotions of other people. Though undoubtedly people die of natural causes outside of the lottery, the townsfolk feel nothing and think nothing of it, as is shown by the unhesitating murder of Tessie. They lack empathy, and don’t have much attachment or real feeling towards one another at all.

However, Tessie isn’t exempt from this absence of feeling. Tessie does protest when she is picked, but until then, she was calmly chatting with her neighbors like she would had she met them at the grocery store. To all of them, this yearly execution is a normal event, just something to do and be over with, like grocery shopping.

This lack of feeling is also self-sustaining. If the parents lack attachment, empathy, and real feeling, so will the children. When Tessie’s family is drawn in the lottery and she realizes she might die, she tries to volunteer her married daughter’s family in her place. And near the end of the story, just before the stoning begins, it is shown that the adults and the children have stones, and somebody gives her little son, who needed help to draw a paper from the lottery box, a stone too.

There is no doubt that a society that meaninglessly, thoughtlessly kills its innocents and forces the children of the one to die to participate- and teaches them that there is nothing wrong about it- is very, very messed up, and in this story’s case all of it stems from the lack of attachment and real feeling between the townspeople. Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn that emotions are good and functional, natural and important- but should not be given control, lest the story starts to twist the other way.

Mother knows best is a universally acknowledged truth declaring that you should listen to your mother and take her advice, because she knows best. However, the people that that phrase is usually aimed at- children and teenagers- are the ones who ignore or go against it most stubbornly. Robert Cormier’s short story “The Moustache” is a perfect example of this, and why we should all listen be listening to our mothers.

In “The Moustache”, Mike is going on a trip to visit his ailing grandmother, who has problems with her memory due to illness. Mike’s mother is checking his appearance before he goes and tells him that at seventeen years old he “has no business wearing a moustache”. However, even though it’s costing him money (he looks older and so must pay the adult fee for the cinema), Mike only says that he’s thinking about shaving it off to placate his mother, ignoring her advice even when she says that “your grandmother probably won’t even recognize you”. After she says this Mike sees “a shadow fall across her face”, implying that 1. the thought of it makes his mother sad, and 2. he knows it, and by the instinct of one who has a mother he wants to fix it. But even then, his teenage drive for autonomy and independence wins out, and he does not shave the moustache.

Then, he leaves for the nursing home where his grandmother stays, and when they see each other, the grandmother mistakes Mike for her own husband, his grandfather. She then proceeds to speak, very emotionally, about her life with her husband and her regret at being unable to apologize for something, and then apologizes for it to Mike, who she still thinks is her husband.

As you may be able to imagine, being mistaken by a close relative for their passed partner, listening to them reminisce about their life together, and apologize for something they did to that partner, made Mike deeply uncomfortable and scared. When he finally gets back home, he tells his mom all the good things- that his grandmother had looked good and healthy and called him Mike, but leaves out what he really wants to say: “you and Dad really love each other, don’t you? I mean– there’s nothing to forgive between you, is there?”. This worry about his parent’s relationship stems from his grandmother’s woes about her own, and like any child who’s grown up in a happy, healthy home with both parents, his worry of how it might affect him.

In the end, Mike does shave off his moustache, but his questions about his parents’ relationship remain. Questions this big aren’t forgotten easily, and presumably it will nag at him for some time, always in the back of his brain. But if he’d shaved off his moustache like his mother said to, his grandmother would probably not have mistaken him for her husband and scared him so, and he wouldn’t have to put up with those worries about his parents’ relationhip in the back of his head. If only he’d listened to his mother, he’d probably have felt a lot better about the visit, which would have prevented the worries plaguing him now, showing that we should all be listening to our mothers because their advice is invaluable.

Humans are a forgetful species. From natural disasters to political upheaval to pandemics like the one we’re in now, we forget all the bad times we should have remembered and learned from- that is, unless we not only lived it, but were directly affected by it.

Take for example racism. It is a long-standing problem in the US- it’s been around for centuries, actually- and we’ve had plenty of lessons on equality, but many people don’t learn. Take for example police brutality toward African-American people, and normal citizens calling the police on them for just living their lives as usual (think of the killings by police- the very people who are supposed to protect- and the woman who called the police on a man who only wanted her to leash her dog, as per the rules). If humanity has learned anything from the era of slavery, activists like MLK, and and a war, this shouldn’t be happening.

But humanity hasn’t learned; rather, it has forgotten- or it has never known at all. Presumably people forget because they weren’t/aren’t directly, personally affected by the problem at hand, so they know little of it. But people who were directly affected by the problem might forget because they hold memories of it too painful to think about. And then there are people who have never known the problem at all, never lived through it, were never affected by it, and they either choose to try and understand and help or remain ignorant of all the lessons they should learn and say things that hurt and never help at all (one notable example is currently in a powerful position and has said things like “the China virus”, leading to violence against Asian-American people. This stands independent of my political views and I will say naught about them).

In conclusion, humanity forgets because of pain, distance, or sheer lack of empathy, which is the real problem behind many of our problems- racism, bigotry, violence, etc. If people would try, really try, to feel what it is to be in another’s position, maybe these problems wouldn’t be so severe. Maybe some of them need never have existed at all. Maybe if everyone read To Kill A Mockingbird and took a leaf out of Atticus Finch’s book, the world would be a better place- but sadly (sometimes), fictional people are- well, fictional.

In Frank R. Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger?” the king of the land serves justice by forcing the wrongdoer to choose between two doors, behind one of which is a tiger, and behind the other a lady. Without knowing who waits behind which door, the wrongdoer chooses between life and death blind and deaf to which one he is choosing. Specifically, the princess’s lover is forced to choose between the two doors when the king finds out about his relationship with the princess. Standing before the doors, the young man looks up at the princess, who points her finger right. So the young man chooses the door on the right, and there the author invites us to decide for ourselves what we believe the princess wanted for her lover: to live married to another woman, and one she hates at that, or to die rather than be with anyone other than her, especially someone she hates?

Now, it can be assumed that the door on the right hides the tiger, for the story describes the princess agonizing over the decision and the passage about the lady is three times as long and much more passionate than the passage about the tiger. So, it seems that the young man’s fate hinges entirely on what the princess wants. However, this is only so because he chooses to trust the princess. If he did not trust the princess with his happiness and his fate, he would not go along with her choice so confidently- what if she chose wrong? And in that is another choice that is the young man’s, and his only: what he wants for himself.

But what he wants for himself is linked with what he wants for the princess. He loves her, yes? Therefore, even faced with the possibility of death, he would gladly die from being mauled by a tiger to see her happy. He sees that it would make the princess unhappy that he does not trust him, so he goes along with her choice.

And there is yet another example of decisions of his own: whether he himself or the princess matters more to him, and whether he trusts the princess, chance, or his own intuition more.

So I guess this is all meant to say that every decision is affected by innumerable other decisions, no matter the importance of those, no matter how ill-informed the decision made seems. And that knowing yourself is a very important thing in life- whether the young man knows himself well enough to decide whether he is willing to face death, emotional infidelity, the unknown, or far, far worse for someone he loves is a very big factor in his fate.

Wording is very important in communication, whether it be in talking out a problem or conveying a message, and O. Henry’s short story Hearts and Hands is and example of that importance.

In the story, a marshal and the couterfeiter he’s arrested switch roles in front of a high-society lady the counterfeiter knows when they meet on a train (the role switch is the plot twist that readers are given small hints to until the reveal at the end). The marshal is handcuffed by his left hand to the counterfeiter to keep him from escaping, meaning that the counterfeiter, Mr. Easton (who is presumably right-handed) has his right hand cuffed, and to anyone listening to his conversation with the lady, he is the marshal. The lady apparently does not see anything strange about the “marshal” (Mr. Easton) having his right hand cuffed, but another pair of passengers had been watching and thought it odd that the “marshal” should have his right hand cuffed rather than his left.

That is what leads readers to the assumption that Mr. Easton is actually the counterfeiter and the other man the marshal; however, a few other meanings could be taken from that observation, going off the assumption of the observer that Mr. Easton is the marshal and the other man the criminal.

Firstly: that Mr. Easton is left-handed, and the buildup of the plot twist to that point was all just a clever ruse to make readers laugh and groan at the ending. The observer says, “Did you ever know an officer to handcuff a prisoner to his right hand?”, deeming it strange, which is reasonable considering that the vast majority of people are right-handed. Therefore, rather than perceiving the plot twist as the role-switch that the author intended it to be, readers might see it as Mr. Easton simply being left-handed.

Secondly: this is a bit of a stretch, but the twist could be perceived as the two men being a homosexual couple, Mr. Easton being left-handed and the other man right-handed and traveling as officer and criminal to avoid questions and judgement. The author describes Mr. Easton as handsome and having a “bold, frank countenanced” and the other man as “ruffled, glum”, and “roughly dressed”. Two traveling companions so different in appearance would no doubt draw stares, judgement, maybe questions, all unwanted; so to avoid the attention, they play roles that draw upon the people’s implicit bias for authenticity. And Mr. Easton’s right hand is cuffed to the other man’s left, which would explain their being left-handed and right-handed, respectively.

The second alternate perception was not completely serious, but it is as logically plausible as the first one and does still work as an example of how important wording is in communication. I guess the main point of this is to watch what you say as well as what you do, because words are powerful, powerful things and can have impacts just as great, if not greater than, actions.

Kimber Lybbert gave a talk on Tedx titled “Dear Grown-ups… Sincerely, Gen Z”, in which she talks about what it’s like to be a part of this generation in relation to the adults in our lives with stories both from her own perspective as an adult and from her students’ perspectives as members of Gen Z.

Kimber Lybbert spent a good portion of her talk speaking about how adults should believe in children their abilities rather than thinking that they just can’t, because they’re children. I have experienced this, and I very much agree, but I think that part of the time dedicated to that particular topic should have gone to how adults sometimes invalidate our mental/emotional states and our identities simply because we are young. One thing she mentions is that in recent years children have shown amazing increase in capacity and capability, while also showing a heart-stopping decrease in self-esteem- which, in my opinion, can often come from invalidation. When you are told that because you are young, you don’t know well enough, you’re just following the trend because it’s “cool” and everyone else is “stupid”, your confidence in yourself, your opinions, and your identity will decrease- and the invalidation doesn’t even have to come from an adult you’re close to.

For example: the student who gave the student address at our socially distanced graduation made a brief mention of highlights of the year, one of which was when this student came out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Of course, all the students and their families were listening to the speech- and later on, an adult made exactly the remark I mentioned earlier: that we, thirteen and fourteen year olds, are too young to know what we want, who we are and are simply following a “trend” because it’s “cool” and everyone else is “stupid”. But, as Ms Lybbert said as an example of how adults shouldn’t blame Gen Z for all our problems- “Alex didn’t ask for gender confusion”. And then keep in mind that there is plenty of homophobia and xenophobia still abound around the world. To that adult, and all of similar thoughts, I say: it’s cool that we are feared, hated, shunned, invalidated by even our own families because of our gender and sexual identities, is it? It’s the popular thing these days, the trend, to be part of a minority that is still so discriminated against, that is sometimes so unaccepted, is it?

In addition, identity isn’t something we take so lightly. You adults teach us to be respectful; would we disrespect so many people like that?

Another thing to think about is that what I talked about in the paragraphs above is the example that some adults are setting for the children around them, and sometimes teach worse lessons than that. Adults tell us, be empathetic, put yourself in someone else’s shoes, but do they ever do that for us? They seem to forget what it’s like to be a teenager, and forget that their childhoods, how they were raised, how they thought and lived and felt are very, very different from ours, how we do.

This started out as some thoughts on Kimber Lybbert’s Tedx Talk, and evolved into something else entirely (and is also very, very incomplete), but I do think that what I said is still something quite important and something we should all be thinking about.

When coping with grief or other kinds of distress in their lives, people will find ways to cope. Plenty will find a healthy way to get themselves through the day, be it art, sports, reading, or just talking their feelings out and maybe having a good, cathartic cry on the bad days. For some people though, these things don’t work. They can’t find something, anything, that will help with the pain and let them recover, so they turn to unhealthy, damaging habits to just keep themselves going, and from there spiral down until their way to cope has become another monster in its own entirety. An example of this is the landlady from Roald Dahl’s short story “The Landlady”, who has seemingly turned to murder and taxidermy to keep herself afloat.

Billy Weaver, a young businessman, is looking for a place to stay in London, and rents a room at the landlady’s place. His first impression of her is very kind, and then “slightly dotty” when she says that “it isn’t very often I have the pleasure of taking a visitor into my little nest”. Strange as it may seem that the owner of a bed-and-breakfast in a big city rarely has customers, what really makes her start seeming creepy is what she says next: that “it is such a pleasure, my dear, such a very great pleasure when now and again I open the door and I see someone standing there who is just exactly right… like you”. She then proceeds to look Billy up and down, very slowly, as if inspecting a specimen to be dissected under a microscope.

What really begins to prove her murderous tendencies, though, is her uncanny knowledge of the physical properties of two “tall, handsome young men”- just like Billy- who had stayed there years prior. Of one, she says that his teeth were white, but not as white as Billy’s; of the other, she says that “there wasn’t a blemish on his body”. Body, not face. The landlady would have had no reason or opportunity to see that young man undressed, so how would she know? In addition, she tells Billy that those two young men have never left, and when she forgets their names then she “come[s] down here and look[s] it up”. That, combined with the fact that she has quite a few “little pets” that she keeps taxidermied and displayed in life-realistic positions in the living room, would indicate that these two young men have been murdered- and then “stuffed”, as her pets are- and kept upstairs on the fourth floor.

Another detail to consider is that the tea the landlady serves Billy “tasted faintly of bitter almonds”. Bitter almonds is a taste associated with cyanide, a highly toxic substance, seemingly fairly little of which is required to kill a person. It would be very easy to dissolve in a hot cup of tea and disguise with milk and sugar, both of which Billy takes with his tea. If Billy drank it- which he does- it can be assumed that he dies quietly, bloodlessly, making it very easy for the landlady to stuff him and add him to her collection.

These murders and stuffings can be seen as a damaging habit the lady developed to cope with a loss during the war that took place several years prior to the story- perhaps, as Billy suggested, the loss of a son. It would explain why she collects young men who are “just right” and keeps them: to take the place of someone irreplaceable, someone she will never have back.

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, a family going on a trip is murdered by a criminal calling himself The Misfit. When the family gets into in accident while driving, The Misfit and his assistants find and kill them, the grandmother last and only after they have had a discussion at length about repentance and fairness. The grandmother tries to convince him that praying to Jesus will relieve him of his sins and The Misfit is only adamant that he is doing fine on his own, insisting that he is doing fine as he is and that no matter what he does he will be punished for it. This suggests that the lesson the story teaches on the fairness of life is that life simply is not fair, but a person does to some extent control how it treats them.

An example of this is what The Misfit says about what he did that landed hin in the penitentiary: “I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there [in the penitentiary], trying to remember what it was I done and I ain’t recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come.” The Misfit has entirely forgotten what he did that first got him in trouble, but naturally, nobody believed him, and people only assumed he was a simple-minded boy lying to get out of trouble; that, and “they had the papers on me”, or in other words, legal documentation of his crime. But the fact that he could not remember what that crime was is a sign that he is, perhaps, mentally troubled, and therefore should have a lighter sentence, and it is not fair to him that he does not.

The Misfit, once out of the penitentiary, continues to commit crimes that, again, he cannot remember, and he is sentenced accordingly to those crimes, again no adjustment being made for his lack of memory. But should there really be an adjustment? Even though The Misfit does not remember these crimes and claims that “I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment”, seeing his punishments out of proportion to his offenses, it is him who continues to choose to commit these crimes.

So while it may be unfair that he is continually punished for things he cannot remember doing, it is completely his own fault that life is treating him that way, for it is his own, free-willed choice to continue committing crimes.

While The Misfit’s life is certainly unfair in that he is punished for what he cannot remember doing, it is almost completely his own fault that life is treating him that way. For while if the penitentiary workers had believed him, he may not have gone down his current path, it is his own, free-willed choice to continue on it, showing that life certainly is not fair but how life treats you is mostly your fault.

In Amy Tan’s short story “Rules of The Game”, Waverly Jong, adolescent chess wizard, goes through a fight with her mom when she embarrasses Waverly by constantly telling everyone that “this is my daughter, [Waverly] Jong”. In their actions in response to each other, several flaws in their relationship become apparent, like lack of communication, maturity, empathy/understanding, and the lack of will to fix any.

The lack of maturity is what fuels the lack of communication, which in turn keeps Waverly and her mother from understanding each other, and the unwillingness to resolve these issues is woven all throughout these and is, of course, what keeps them from being resolved. An instance that demonstrates all of these flaws is a fight they have in a market, which stems from Waverly’s anger at her mother telling everyone they meet that Waverly Jong is her daughter.

In response to Waverly’s embarrassment and annoyance, instead of responding calmly and responsibly like an adult mother should, the mother only gives icy silence, and when she actually does respond it is to call her own daughter a “stupid girl” for accidentally bumping into someone. The mom does not show the level of maturity to be expected from her, but the same cannot be said of Waverly, because she is still growing up and cannot be expected to show the same level of maturity that her mom should, but does not. Waverly runs from the site and does not return home for hours.

In the market, Waverly does not properly communicate her feelings with her mother, and her mother nearly fails to communicate at all, leading to a complete lack of understanding on both parts of the other’s feelings. Her mother’s greeting upon her return home- that if this girl would not bother with them, they would not bother with her- demonstrates that she is unwilling to even attempt to actually have a proper talk and fix things with her daughter. Waverly says nothing and only retreats to her room, proving herself also unwilling to fix things. However, the blame for this unwillingness can be almost entirely attributed to the mom. As children and young adults, a girl’s primary role model is her mother. Mom demonstrates what a mature woman should be, and we follow her example. So when Mom teaches us a certain thing, whether it be something we should learn or the exact opposite, we learn it.

In this way, it is shown that Waverly Jong and her mother’s unwillingness to communicate and empathize with each other in a mature way can be almost completely blamed on her mother (Waverly does have other influences- friends, teachers, her own thinking, etc.), and it can only be hoped that Waverly will learn a better lesson and that she and her mom will fix things, for that is entirely up to them.