Last Blog Post

Yes, I’m a little late. I have no excuse but I am sorry. I guess I got a little carried away with senioritis, and then felt bad because I actually have loved this class so much that I wanted to leave a blog post, even if it’s a really bad one. For a long time, I didn’t know what I wanted to talk about.

I could talk about how unsatisfying the ending of Parable of the Sower was, and how I kind of hate that none of the books we read ever did anything to end the dystopia they were in. For example, Hunger Games is about the girl who eventually sets out to dismantle the dystopia she’s in and it works. In The Matrix, at the end of the first movie they tell the audience that they’ll continue to dismantle their dystopia, and I haven’t watched the other two movies, but I don’t have to to know that that there is going to be some change. But Parable of the Sower (PoS) doesn’t give me that inclination at all. I know there are two other books that I haven’t read, but I would’ve liked to have at least some hint of something greater happening in Bankole’s farm than them striving for survival like they had been the whole book.

I guess I could also write something that ties all four books together and compare and contrast them. It is interesting that we read two books written by men with male protagonists, and two written by women with female protagonists. It’s also interesting how the only book written by a non-white person is the one that actually talks about racial dynamics in the dystopia as opposed to just whipping out any non-white person or writing them off as “Savages”. I mean, it was really cool that BNW had that aspect of Savages that tied back to Native Americans, but I felt that in comparison to how PoS talked about race it felt really lazy.

I could also use this blog post to just really focus on The Matrix. I could go into the relationship between Neo and Trinity, talk about how throughout the movie they really didn’t seem to be forcing a relationship but something was happening, then at the end they rush straight to a Sleeping Beauty situation where she announces her love and kisses him and that brings him back to life. I mean, if we want to talk about lazy writing, that’s a gold mine. I could also talk about how interesting the concept is that we actually live in a fictional world, but the reality is actually quite a lot worse. The argument that The Matrix presents through Cypher, whether it’s better to live in a horrible reality but be in control of yourself or to live in blissful ignorance while being micromanaged. That argument is not something unique to The Matrix, it’s definitely something we’ve seen a lot: Lauren’s dad didn’t want to leave their house choosing blissful ignorance; Offred continuously broke the rules to sleep with Nick choosing reality with agency; Bernard and Helmholtz had that whole conversation with Mufasa who chose blissful ignorance; and Winston and Julia sought out O’Brien because they wanted reality with agency but he forced them into a sort of blissful ignorance.

All of these could’ve been great blog posts, but I can’t really think about anything to delve deep into because I just graduated high school. That is seriously the only thing I can think about. Also, deep down, I really didn’t want this class to end, so I keep trying to postpone my last assignment. So I’ll just have to accept these little snippets of thought as the best I can really do for now. I hope we all continue to criticize the dystopian aspects of our world, and if it comes down to it, I hope none of us really leave a baby to die in the wild.

-- Cocoa