Two of the Same

In what ways does Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress relate to this passage from Pere Goriot?

Honore Balzac, much like Dai Sijie, layers the doom, gloom, and never-ending entrapment, thick; the language in both stories really convey the trapped feeling; "old age declining into death, bright youth pressed into drudgery"(Balzac) and "he didn't possess a single skill that might help him to become one of the three in a thousand. He couldn't even dream of it" (Sijie 18). Reading the book, at parts I started to feel claustrophobic myself. The feeling of being stuck in a position that is as dreadful as the one the protagonist has to live in, and not being able to get away, is not bad, it is depressing. The feeling is enough to make anyone go mad. In the Little Chinese Seamstress, Luo and the narrator have seen the outside; they know how good life can really be outside of "Phoenix in the Sky." Much like the first generation of slaves to America, the "city youths" feel the depression and enslavement more potently because they have known freedom, making living on "Phoenix in the Sky" much harder to cope with. When there seems to be something that will ease the pain, it turns out to be a disappointment; "suffering is always real and joy very often false"(Balzac). And if there is something to help, it is shrouded in resentment; "'So, are you weeping tears of joy?' I said. 'No. All I feel is loathing.' 'Me too. Loathing for everyone who kept these books from us'" (Sijie 99). Nothing can be taken as just joy or good without it being tinted by sadness or evil. Another way Balzac and Sijie compare in the way they portray the feeling of being stuck is through metaphor of the setting. The "valley of ever-peeeling plaster and muddy black gutters" (Balzac), gives a sense of never changing, never evolving, never getting better surroundings. Through setting, Balzac makes us feel and know the hopelessness of the valley. The cave in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a different metaphor conveying the same thing; "I'm going to die in this mine" (Sijie 30). The Little Chinese Seamstress and Pere Goriot are two different settings with the same feeling behind them. But there are more differences between the two stories then the setting. In Pere Goriot, it is "difficult to imagine any castastrophe producing more than a momentary sensation there" (Balzac) but that is exactly what happens in The Little Chinese Seamstress; "she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman's beauty is a treasure beyond price" (Balzac 184). The "catastrophe" was the imagination the books opened in the girl and the "sensation" was so uplifting that she got out of the trap.

Evil

I do not think that people are born evil. And i am not saying that because i have some optomistic transcendentalist view of the world, I simple don't think anyone is born anything. I believe personality is purely based on past experience. Anyone that is evil is that way because of the way they were raised and what they experienced. And yes, there are people that are evil, Anyone that argues that people like my mom are just "doing bad things but they are good people" are full of themselves ( i was joking about my mom, i just couldn't think of anyone that wasn't cliche on the spot so i used the typical teen response). One might argue that if evil is only based on past experience then why don't two people that have the same experience, like child abuse or something, both commit an evil action? The answer is that the one that didn't most likely had other past experiences that taught them not to commit the action. So evil is based on the whole life experience, the whole combination of experiences if you will. I believe everyone is partially evil just like everyone has been exposed to some negative experiences. Of course some are more than others but like the saying goes, everyone has their dirty laundry.

Othello

In Shakespeare’s play, Othello, every character is noble in their own way. Either their loyalty or their love shows how each character is the perfect candidate for a good fate. But ironically and tragically, it also shows how each character is the candidate for a terrible fate. The tragedy that the irony defines, for each character, is then beautifully woven together into the overarching Tragic vision. The Tragic Vision manifests itself through the irony of the good characteristics of the characters becoming their eventual downfall.
Society regards loyalty as one of the most important characteristics someone can exemplify. Loyalty is represented in several ways in Othello: husband-wife loyalty, master-servant loyalty, and friend-friend loyalty. Through all these types of loyalty, Othello is connected to the characters of the play. For example, Michael Cassio not only is loyal to Othello as a servant, but also as a friend; “Othello- …[Cassio] went between us very oft” (Othello Act 3 scene 1). While this loyalty made Cassio the noble character he is, it also partially led him to be struck down by the “divine lightning.” The irony of the one trait that makes one a noble person also being the trait that singles one out as a casualty, is the distinguishing factor between a tragedy and just a sad incident.
Desdemona’s loyalty to Othello is derived from her love of the moor. Her love glues her to Othello. Even in the face of death, Desdemona’s love of Othello only grows; “Desdemona- Nobody; I myself. Farewell/ Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell” (Othello Act 5 Scene 2). Love, arguably the most powerful feeling, also drove Emilia to do the right thing, which ironically and tragically killed her. “Emilia- that handkerchief thou speak’st of/ I found by fortune and did give my husband” (Othello Act 5 Scene 2).
Both of the women’s loves and the loyalty Cassio felt for Othello and Desdemona were their noble traits and their downfalls and thus gave the situation tragedy, but the tragic vision is the accumulation of the tragedies all tied together in a web. Just as Iago foreshadowed, “Iago- out of her goodness make the net/ That shall enmesh them all” (Othello Act 2 Scene 3), the best of people ensnares them in the trap of tragedy.