I've come to the deduction that all my Comp II class is good for is teaching me how to take quotes insanely out of context and use them in a way to prove stupid points "successfully" .... bugger off the whole "wait.... I have common sense and can therefore make arguments myself" line of thought..... I need to find people with degrees in underwater basket weaving to agree with me before my point is valid.....

Okay! Now that you have that.... my teacher offered us a prompt... "Consider some of the following questions: Is all the world a stage? How much control do we really have over our lives? Are our destinies largely driven by the personas we take on or by the roles society tells us we must play? As you answer these questions, you’ll begin to construct a thesis about the nature of reality and personal freedom."

I took it as a personal chore upon myself to write the "No, we don't have free will" side of the argument.... or maybe it was just fated to be so? *rolls eyes*

It made me giggle because "The challenge of this assignment is practicing a form of critical thinking called, synthesis, drawing from multiple “texts” and finding the overlapping connections. The goal is to make a cohesive argument not about the merits of the texts themselves, but about how they comment, individually and collectively, on the issue at hand. The section of our text and sample student essay that begin on p. 212 should be helpful supplements to understanding this type of writing."

My teacher is a nubtard..... I *love* college professors...

ANYHOW! I wish to gift/curse you all with the ability to read my paper if you really truly wanna. All 4 pages of it...

The inevitable turn of events?

Lives with inevitable events, inevitable outcomes, inevitable death, and, of course, inevitable doom. Could this be the to what we are destined to play our lives to? How much control do we truly have of our own lives? Are we truthfully free to make our own choices in this life or are we, as Shakespeare so colorfully mused, “merely players (Shakespeare line 2)?” The answer is quite simple. No, we are not in control of our lives. Sure, we may be able to improvise the details, but the general plot, the general setting, is laid out in front of us. Merely as an example, if little Billy’s party is doomed to fail, it will fail. Whether it is from his guests not showing up or his presents being items he doesn’t want or his cake falling on the ground, his party will fail. Society has not helped with our free will in the slightest of ways. It is, in fact, detrimental to the thought of free will. In our lives, “all the world’s a stage (Shakespeare line 1)” and we still receive our lines, that much is obvious. Though, instead of small books, we are given billboards. If one looks in with this mindset, the rest of the analogy falls into place as well. Instead of stages, we are given shopping malls, where we rush to fulfill our “lines.” Instead of the head directors, we have the head corporations. And oh do we wish to please our directors.

The strongest assisting player to this mindset is the short story “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson. Jackson, unknowingly or not, has shown that our directors may come in many different shapes, sizes, and quantities. Old Man Warner, without even a shadow of a doubt, is one of these directors in “The Lottery.” When Mr. Adams mentions that some villages up north have given up the lottery, Old Man Warner stands up on his soap box and starts listing off what “will” happen if they were to abandon the lottery like other people (Jackson 841). Just like in the movie business, when the director’s useful little actors start to form bubbles of dissention within their ranks, the director is there to whip all traces of doubt from their minds. Old Man Warner does this with expert care. He doesn’t beat around the bush; he just lays a list of the repercussions the crowd would experience if they rebelled. Whereas he is vastly outnumbered by the rest of the population, his seniority and his vocal outcries persuade the rest that this is the correct thing to do. More likely than not, when Old Man Warner wasn’t such an old man, he had a similar person in his life and Warner grew up with the unwavering belief that the lottery was fail-proof and correct. So, just as he was led all those years before, he leads this community, not without help, but he leads nonetheless.

While Old Man Warner plays an important part, he definitely doesn’t have the job of director all to himself though; Mr. Summers plays his part as well. Debatably more important, Mr. Summers keeps the physical devices of the lottery up and running. If something were to happen to Mr. Summers, the box would fall into more derelict shape than it already is and be passed on into oblivion much more quickly than otherwise. Jackson showed us that of all the people in town, “[t]he lottery was conducted … by Mr. Summers, who had the time and energy to devote to civic activities (Jackson 838).” Mr. Summers stands in front of the actors and waves the props around until they all say their predetermined lines with the predetermined pauses and predetermined hesitations. As with Warner, Mr. Summers does his job dutifully. Sure, he isn’t as vocally talented as Warner is, as we found when no one would listen to him about creating a new black box (Jackson 839), but he plays a good conductor nonetheless. It is imperative to understand that our directors do come in many ways, shapes, and forms.

For example, at first glance, the documentary The Hobart Shakespeareans seems to be a very strong assertion that we can break away from the mold and that we can do “our” thing, but it is merely another example that we are indubitably led through life by the hands of others, by the hands of our ever vigilant directors. The Hobart Shakespeareans is merely an example that our directors don’t need to be murderous fiends as described in The Lottery. Rafe Esquith demonstrates this by, year after year, scooping up these inner city kids and, instead of giving them the same lines they’ve received all these years, grants them lines that he has created himself. Rafe even mentioned that sometimes his teachings aren’t enough, that his lines don’t keep the children, and that the children sometimes fall back into the same old lines of corporate America. Some, though, stay with his lines and move on to greater things. (Hobart)

This isn’t surprising, if someone were acting out a later part of life while everyone was still acting out an earlier part, it is much easier to fall in with the crowd, but when they do finally get to the later part of life again, either they have forgot their original plan or the rules of conduct have been changed by our great corporate directors beyond compatibility. So they ditch their copy and continue to go with the rest, into corporate oblivion. Some, on the other hand, go on and find themselves diligent to Rafe’s teachings. They go on, go up, in life, and they make something of themselves. For instance, one of Rafe’s old students helped his class become a nonprofit organization in order for Rafe to be able to reach out to more children (Hobart). This is merely an example a good director, a director that cares for his actors.

While Warner and Rafe were indeed good foils, but they didn’t cover all of the points in the slightest of regards. There are also the directors that specialize in letting their actors improvise, down a certain path. All that these directors do is set up the camera and dish out their crap. They don’t care how the actors get to the final lines, but so long as they get there. In Marsha Norman’s ‘Night Mother, the directors do just that. Jessie is divorce, people learn of, what she thinks should be, her private memories, and she is left to make whatever decisions she wants in hasten her demise (Norman). While the directors didn’t literally give Jessie the gun and tell her to pull the trigger, they placed everything in motion. It could be debated that Jessie could have taken the all too glorious “high road,” but if she hadn’t killed herself and was talked out of it, her life would only be open to another attempt by her very dedicated directors.

They would have continued to wear her down, continued to break into her private bubble until this little soiree would be brought into the light again, only this time she would have been forced to swim harder against the current, from deeper waters of depression in order to make the same healthy decision. Our ever-loving directors have the master plan in their pristine manila folders and they intend to uphold the initial plans to the best of their abilities. Plot twists, body counts, cliff hangers, and the whole plethora of movie techniques. They make as many sad, happy, or mind puzzling endings as they are called to produce.

Each person may play many roles, the baby, the child, the lover, the fighter, the proper, the mature, and the late (Shakespeare). Whereas this statement is well known and is true, even to this day, people fail to grasp that we aren’t allowed to run rampant with these parts. There are the good, the bad, and the average, but all of our directors have something in common. They take their job in the most serious regard and give us a purpose in our roles, otherwise we would just be red shirted. Extras. It may not be fun to think about, but if we didn’t have anyone to lead, where would we be? Everything in our current society was pushed through by someone in a director’s position. Everything from the McDonald brothers and their restaurant to Bill Gates and Microsoft, Nathan Forrest and the KKK to Martin Luther King and civil rights were pushed through. It takes people of strong dedication to be our directors, and they are ever vigilant in our lives, and their legacies live on. Whether they are for better or worse, that’s a completely different essay, but they control us nonetheless.


*shrug* Crap happens?