INKLINGS
A Journal Of In-School Writing
Fieldston School
Inklings 2016
All Photo Credits:
Simon Curtis-Ginsberg,
Gus Aronson,
Form VI
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Fieldston Upper School
Editors’
Note
This year’s publication of in-school writing is a revival
of a Fieldston literary magazine. Old copies of Inklings
or New Inklings, from 1902 to the 1990s, are stacked
in vertical silence on the shelves of Room 133 in the
English Department. A brief perusal reveals gems—
one volume, 1967, has a comic epic by a senior named
Gilbert Heron, now known, of course, as the late,
great American jazz and soul musician and poet Gil
Scott-Heron; a treatise about God by Shira Rosan,
future Edgar and Nero Award-winning mystery writer
(a.k.a. S.J. Rozan); and a sonnet by freshman Andrew
Delbanco, currently Alexander Hamilton Professor of
American Studies at Columbia. This twenty-first century revival of Inklings, we hope, contains work that
readers might go back to and say—so here is where
that writer began. Our many thanks to the teachers
and students who submitted work from their classes.
The hard-working editors read numerous anonymous
submissions throughout the year. We hope the results
of the editors’ deliberations reward the reader, and
that this capsule compendium, preserving a mere
fraction of the volumes of intense work done in
school during the year, may occupy, too, a brief space
of vertical silence amid the great hum of the world in
a reader’s mind.
Editorial Board
Isabel Astrachan
Hallie Gruder
Sarah Hirschfield
Noah Knopf
Annabelle Lesser
Michaela Norman
Arianna Ruiz
Isaac Sonnenfeldt
Advisor
Gina Apostol
Inklings 2016
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Table of Contents
Alex Greenberg
Aperture 8
Jamir Muñoz
Home 10
Sarah Lyon
The Wild Gene  14
Peter Dinella
Obstructions: An Exercise  19
Anna McNulty
Let Us Not Forget Social Tragedy  23
Leora Shlasko
Not All of Us Are Nannies  27
Alex Greenberg
Drainage   30
Hallie Gruder
Chaucer’s Cunning  32
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Fieldston Upper School
Sundari Sheldon-Collins
Swallowing Uniformity  35
Noah Knopf
Selfless Manhood  36
Hakeem Adeyemi
Toxic Masculinity   40
Natalie White
Filling The Stands  43
Victoria Smith
Black Women Activists Matter  48
Lewis Arnsten
The Role of a Manly Woman   51
Katherine Serwer
Eliza Ornell is Weird  55
George McNulty
Haarlem 58
Grayson Cullen
Process Over Product  62
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Isabella Pillay
Notation & Obstructions  66
Isabel Astrachan
Shit Happens  71
Alec Fleischer
Fossil Fuel Investements Are not Progressive   75
Cary Moore
What Blindness Illuminates   78
Arianna Ruiz
Sugary Apples  81
Sydney Bergen
A Traitor’s Death  83
Sarah Hirschfield
An Illusion of Philosophers and Fools  86
Ariana Reichler
In Wonder-Heaven  90
Kaya West-Uzoigwe
Vessels 95
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Joelle Windmiller
Deconstructing Daisy Buchanan   97
Sarah Najjar
Najjar and I   100
Aukai Elkaslasy
Jay Gatsby: A True Debonair Man   101
William Casciato
The Mountain  106
Ishaan Rai
Alice’s Adventures in the Metropolitan Museum  109
Sean Zhang
Yoroi 117
Hannah Waldman
On Self-Consciousness  119
Inklings 2016
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Alex Greenberg
Form V
Poem
Aperture
“Samuel Harrell was stomped on by some 20 officers
known as the ‘Beat Up Squad’ at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, who then threw the mentally ill
prisoner’s limp body down a set of stairs.”
(NY Daily News)
The medic pulled so much rope from Harrell’s mouth
it was like a magic trick,
his face wet with panic
body bent into an impossible position
his eyes staring so intently at nothing
he must have been looking inside of himself.
The guards hid the crimsoned bullets
in our eyes so the police
couldn’t find them.
We woke heavy the next morning our faces
lined with crow’s feet,
the blood on the floor hardening into rose petals
to create the memorial
that no one else would.
The markings sun-whittled into a name.
In my own bed
I try to remember that night.
Harrell on his back,
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handcuffed and cross-eyed
clutching his knees
while the guards jumped on his body
like giddy children on a busted trampoline.
They all had names until they didn’t.
One officer told me to open my mouth
& I refused.
Then he stood on my neck
& I opened.
Harrell the martyr.
Wrapped in a torn white sheet
slipping
back and forth
in the arms of two stout guards
like a warped fish.
His hair dusted with alabaster.
The lines on his palms like little omens:
knife wounds from the devil
during his year in the womb.
I look at my hands. I have them too.
The fortune teller does not know what to make of them.
Please Lord.
I bow and bow,
waiting for my head to land in somebody’s lap.
Inklings 2016
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Jamir Muñoz
Form VI
Memoir
Home
W
hen I was about five years old, I broke my parents’
lamp. I’d never broken anything before, and as
a result, my parents always praised me for being
so careful with objects and furniture in our apartment. I had no
idea what to expect from them; I had never really done anything
wrong before then. I started to think up different excuses to explain why the lamp that used to stand upright in the corner of the
living room was now erratically spread out around more than the
corner of the living room, but as an only child, there was nobody
but myself to blame.
I’ll always remember my dad’s reaction to seeing the scattered
lamp shards across the floor. He laughed. And it wasn’t an “I’m
laughing because I’m so angry” laugh; it was a genuine laugh.
Then he walked toward me, barefoot, carelessly gliding over the
pointed lamp shards. He crouched next to me and chuckled,
“Don’t worry, I’m surprised it had lasted this long.” As we were
cleaning up, I accidentally stepped on a piece of lamp and realized
that what had appeared to be a beautiful glass lamp was made of
plastic. This both relieved and unsettled me: it was one of the first
moments I realized that the place where I lived was different from
how it appeared. That place was apartment B23 on 85 Strong Street. It was not
located in a particularly good neighborhood, and the apartment
building itself reflected that. Whether it was a bright and cloudless day, or a foggy and moonless night, the lobby of the building
always appeared the same. The cracked and muted mint-green
walls reverberated any noise that touched them throughout the
entire lobby. There was always the sound of a flickering light bulb,
but it was unclear from where it came because the lights in the
building seemed to beam without pause, illuminating the room in
an unnaturally bright way. I’d never use the railing while walking
up the stairs. I could hear my mom’s voice in my head, “Who
knows whose hands have touched those railings? And who knows
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whose hands have touched those hands!” The handle on the door
into Apartment B23, my apartment, was incredibly deceiving. It
was one of those rounded golden-metallic cheap doorknobs that
were on every other door in the building. However, right on the
other side of the door, inside my apartment, was a fancy porcelain doorknob that always felt a little bit uneven in my hand. As
with the doorknob, the rest of my apartment could not have been
more different than the building in which it resided.
Everybody was confused when they entered my family’s old
apartment, but nobody was ever fooled. People’s reactions to it
were similar to what their reactions would be if they judged a
book negatively by its decaying cover, discovered a beautiful story
within, and then slowly discovered a plethora of misspelled words
and typos that detracted from what they thought to be a beautiful
story. The inside of Apartment B23 belonged inside a very dimly
lit apartment building in Tribeca—dimly lit, of course, so that
nobody could see that it actually didn’t belong there. On the most
basic level, the entire apartment was aesthetically pleasing. It may
not sound like much, but when you take into account the fact
that every other apartment in the building was, contrarily, not nice,
it’s a pretty grand statement. There were extravagant glass lamps
and ornately designed plates and cups. There were ostentatious
curtains and unnecessarily showy shower curtains. Everything was
very delicate. Or so I thought. As I aged, I began to realize that I
had been mistaking delicacy with cheapness.
I had witnessed true delicacy. I had seen, touched, and experienced genuine luxury in the homes of friends. I had heard the
clink of a glass lamp as I accidentally bumped it against the wall
and had subconsciously compared it to the silence that occurred
when my lamp shattered. I had felt concern when my friend
spilled juice on his parents’ valuable sofa, and had felt that concern wash away as my friend reassured me that his parents would
not be mad. Furthermore, I had felt comfort in the low-cost
homes of my relatives. I had felt safety and warmth while eating
dinner with my cousins, watching T.V. and laughing with each
other. I felt at home every Thanksgiving in my grandmother’s
home, but I knew that I wouldn’t feel the same way if Thanksgiving dinner were held at my apartment.
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It started to take a toll on me. Why would my parents go to
such great lengths to hide the truth? Was there something wrong
with the location in which we lived? If so, why did we live there?
Were my parents trying to convince others that we were of a higher class, or were they trying to ignore the fact that we weren’t?
The biggest question that I asked myself was whether or not
I belonged there, in my own apartment. I’m still unsure of what
I meant by that question. Was I asking whether I belonged in a
crappy apartment building on a block that also held a perpetually empty playground? Or was I asking whether I belonged in
an apartment that effectively simulated living in the upper class?
Technically, both questions are the same. In asking if I belonged
in one place or another, I was really just trying to find out where
I did belong. I still don’t have a clear-cut answer. For my entire
life, I’ve felt as if I’ve been emulating a false reality of sorts. Since
kindergarten, I’ve been enrolled in private schools that my family
can barely afford. As such, I’ve been subconsciously pretending
to belong to a higher economic class than I actually do. This isn’t
to say that people who can afford more inherently act differently
than people who can’t, but I cannot help but see myself in my
old, deceptively prosperous apartment building. I’ve learned from
Apartment B23. I’ve learned that there’s a difference between
pretending to be better and actually striving to be better.
A person’s home plays a notable part in characterizing who
lives there, not only to that person but also to others who know
him. I grew up plagued by falsity and ambiguity. I began to realize
that I was, in fact, undefined. This realization helped me discern
that Apartment B23 was simply a place I lived in and not a home
for me at all. For my parents, B23 was a home. However, in
hindsight, I don’t think they’d consider it a home at all. When we
lived there, B23 was a home for my parents, but in memory, B23
has lost its mysticism. In memory, all of the little details that gave
away the truth of the apartment, like small cracks in the wall and
the perpetual sound of a leaky faucet, seem accentuated indefinitely.
Now, my parents and I have found a new home. We currently
live in the top floor of a two-story townhouse. It has a modest,
fairly unkempt, tiny backyard, and an even smaller front yard. The
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railing following the stairs that go up to our front door is a little
rusty. We used to try and paint over the rust, but it became too
much of a hassle, so we’ve since stopped. My mom now lets me
use the railing when I’m going up and down the stairs because
she knows that only we have touched it, and she knows, for the
most part, who has touched our hands. Our home isn’t large
by any account, but it also isn’t too small. It blends in with the
rest of the almost identical houses adjacent to it on the rest of
the block, but it also isn’t bland. It’s a house that is perfect for
non-permanency. It’s fitting as an interim house; it’s a place that
feels simultaneously like just a place to live and also a home, up
until I leave for college and my parents move out of New York.
When people come over, the first thing that they do isn’t
look around suspiciously. People rarely have any reaction at all to
our home, and when they do, it’s a positive one. I currently live in
a home that can’t be used to cast any sort of immediate judgment or assumption on myself. The only way that a person could
accurately infer things about my parents and me from my home
is through the photographs on the wall that my dad took on our
family vacations. Or through the hole in the ceiling that I accidentally made while dancing with a broomstick. Or through the small
scorch mark on the wall left over from when my mom was trying
to use the blowtorch to finish off her crème brûlée for the first
time. Our home is full of stories and personality as opposed to
being a mask to keep our true selves anonymous. Homes should
not be used to define who lives there, but instead to add depth to
them. I currently live in a home with a plastic lamp in the corner
of every room.
And that’s good enough.
Inklings 2016
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Sarah Lyon
Form V
Fiction
The Wild Gene
People, people who would know say that when you lose a sense, your
other senses are heightened. That’s why Ray Charles was able to hear birds
no one else could, or that kid with hearing aids in my high school made a
small fortune at the poker table. Here, weighing down a nursing home bed
and gazing at the television static, slick and cold-blooded as a fish, I wonder:
whatever sense replaced the common sense I could never quite muster? Why
didn’t my brain and body compensate for my foolishness by electrifying my
fingers with the skill of Van Gogh or spitting verses of poetry into my
pen? Why was the void always open, gaping, a bulging mouth waiting for
chaos to break forth?
y father wrote that ridiculous, self-indulgent
garbage from his bed in 2010. He dictated it to a
computer in a chaotic pattern of blinks and twitches, somehow managing to translate the slightest roll of his eye
into Caesar Cipher. I spilled more money on that computer than
on anything else I’ve ever bought. “Locked-in syndrome,” they
call it. Weird as it might sound to the rational ear, I think he was
one of the few happy customers when it came to his paralysis.
If given the chance, he would’ve slammed that door behind him
years ago, double-padlocked it, and barricaded it.
I’ve been looking through his stuff again lately, which I realize now was a pretty awful decision, but now that I’ve started, I
can’t keep this wheel from churning. You see, my father was a bad
person, that’s for sure, or at least not a good one. It’s hard not to
deify the dead. When someone passes away, all the things you hated most about them become “charming attributes” or “idiosyncrasies.” The way he slung his tie over his shoulder after work and
propped his feet up on his desk, soiling piles and piles of papers,
his nitpicking of every single sentence for the slightest error or
stammer, his passive aggressive nods between puffs of his rotten,
shedding cigar (“Damn it, son, we’re all gonna die someday”) are
vignettes immortalized, images of him as a strange, fascinating
character. We look back fondly on the man who caused so much
M
14 Fieldston Upper School
pain, seeing his bullet-fast mind as “intelligence,” his razor-sharp
eyes as “determination,” and his trembling, clenched fists as emblems of strength. The ability to cause another the kind of pain
he did throughout his life is not strength. It is the most putrid and
debilitating weakness.
I feared for a long time that I would turn into my father.
Really, I still do. In my family, the men are notorious for their anger and spite—or, I suppose, our anger and spite. In the way that
premature baldness, or high blood pressure, or superior athletic
ability run in some families, it is almost a given, a sick rite-of-passage, that each of us does at least a short stint in prison. As the
egg into the caterpillar, the caterpillar into the chrysalis, and the
chrysalis branching out into a brilliant, golden nightmare, we Ansel men are too pretty and too rotten for anyone’s good. Beneath
the veneer of tenderness and beauty lies a verdigris core, as green
and nefarious as Lady Liberty after the shiny copper starts to
corrode—beckoning the little blind girls into a new world, only to
slosh them back to home harbor, their tiny bodies leaving behind
but ripples and half-pieces of that alien fruit, the ba-na-na, on
which they, not seeing what everyone else was doing, chomped
down, peel and all.
Most of the stuff I found in his attic was pretty standard.
I flipped through his junior high school yearbook, in which he
smiles wide with no front teeth, missing about seven fangs in
total from little scuffles with his dad, his classmates, his teachers,
himself. I sifted through his clothes–mostly white t-shirts–relics
of his Marlon Brando-fueled fantasy of cool. It was a strange
experience, looking through all of the things he’d owned. I felt
I was gazing at a man’s life, distilled to a room, stuffed into little
cardboard boxes bursting at the seams that refused to be ducttaped shut.
And then I found the box. You know the one I’m talking
about. You’ve probably read the book, or at least pretended to, or
glanced at the movie’s Wikipedia page in the bar bathroom just to
keep up with everybody’s conversation. I found the box stuffed
with his diaries. All forty of them. Barefoot, with only underwear
and a sock on in the New England cold, I sat down on the couch
with broken springs and read them all. Some were short, some
long, all rambling.
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July 4, 1948 HAPPY JULY FOURTH!!!!!! I am so exited for
the barbecue later i can hardly wait!!! Dad says that this year, we can set off
real fireworks (you know the big kind) and mama said that I can bring two
freinds so of course charles and walt!!! Earlier i think though we are going
to walts parents country club since his dad invented some toaster or something
and there is a pool there can you beleive it???
February 26, 1956 I can’t believe it. Nancy broke up with me. She
did it over the telephone and I could hear her friends in the background,
giggling… I can’t understand what I did to deserve this and I know it sounds
dumb but I just can’t...This sounds crazy but I don’t know and I’m scared I
might have done something really bad… But then I found the records, the official stuff, and I felt sick.
Reports of his murders, newspaper clippings, photos of victims. I
vomited into his dusty old motorcycle helmet and, wiping the cold
sweat off my forehead, continued to read. It’s not like any of it
was new, but the thoughts still festered, my mind pulsing with that
sour refrain: soon, soon, soon, soon…
December 25, 1981, The Emmelston Scuttlebutt - Emmelston, Massachussetts.
A true Christmas miracle! Kenneth Ansel, notorious“The Halloween
Killer” or “The Blue-Eyed Devil,” has finally been brought to justice for his
murder of 25-year-old prostitute Jessica Ross. The anniversary of the heinous
act was almost two months ago, the first Halloween in Emmelston’s history in
which not a single child went trick-or-treating. The killer was sentenced to 25
years without parole at Erkensmine Correctional Facility. “When he gets out,
if he ever does, we’re going to Canada,” says Emma Allen, a schoolteacher,
mother of four, and widely beloved member of the community. “That man is
just evil. Pure evil, that’s for sure.”
I think a lot about legacy: about what we leave behind and
the footprints that are simply dusted away with the sands of time.
When I was little, I thought everyone was important. Now, I’m
wondering if anyone is.
August 22, 1992 - Erkensmine Correctional Facility, Erkensmine,
Massachusetts.
I was born in some place, somewhere, in the woods of New Hampshire.
This was before the glamorous summer camps infected the area, before the
ruthless scythes sliced through that precious lush: when the forest was still the
forest, a tree still a tree, a lake a world and not a dumping ground. I don’t
know anything about my “real” folks; I never knew them. I’ve spoken to
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a bunch of people from the area, and all they’ve told me is little more than
supposition, rural myth. The bottom line was, I was incorrigible. There was
nothing I could do to change that fact.
Here is the little information that I do know. I was born in the late
1930s/early 1940s to a mother laughably incapable of motherhood. She was
a hooker, and not really—all there, if you know what I mean. She didn’t realize that she was pregnant until she gave birth. I was born at the base of a
tall tree in the middle of the woods. When I came out, I was covered in pine
needles and sap, gasping for air but not crying. In her hysteria, my mother
buried me beneath a thin layer of saplings and thimbleweeds. Then, she went
back into town, slipped into confession, spilled all of this, and tossed herself
into some river somewhere, never to be seen or heard from again.
The townspeople prayed for me for months—years, even. They searched
for me, turning over every leaf, diving to the rocky pit of every stream, but
could never find me. I was the lost baby, the mysterious bastard child, but a
child just the same. It is impossible to turn away from such a young person’s
suffering and, pious as they were, the folks of Isherwood, New Hampshire,
blessed me. They blessed each tiny finger and toe of my short life, whispering
tender litanies under their breaths at night, breathing their faith into my every
glowing limb. In their eyes, my story was romantic, like a sick storybook tale
of a diamond in the rough: a pure, holy baby emerging from a bloody, boiling
pool of lust, greed, burlap, and booze. Six or seven years later, when they
finally found me, the pastor and his family took me in, not knowing in the
pits of their lovely little hearts what raising me would truly mean. I was a
child. Just a child.
I had grown into something far worse, though, something beyond the
scope of those kind, small-town people’s imaginations. The worst possible
nightmare had come true: I had survived. I had survived and grown in those
woods, raised by animals and by myself. I developed as another wild animal,
and as my hair grew coarse and thick, my skin weathery from the sun and
bitter cold, and my nails curled beneath my toes and fingers like sharp worms,
I became the savage creature I was always meant to be—a firebreathing
monster with light golden-brown eyes and straw-colored hair.
I have to admit, for the short time that he was around when
we were growing up, he was a good father. For feeding us applesauce or whatever. For teaching me how to do a pull up, even
with these chicken arms. As much as I might hate him, and yes, I
do hate him, he gave me gifts for which I will always be grateful. He gave me my 20/20 vision. He gave me my strong, wide
Inklings 2016
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knuckles. He gave me my love for snowboarding, It’s A Wonderful
Life, and grapefruits. Some Sunday afternoons, though the pang
of my mother’s memory gnawed at him from the inside, he would
sit and read his newspaper outside of the ICP as my brother and
I, sons of a photographer, gazed at the endless arrays of photos,
beauty beneath glass. I was named Adam Ansel for a reason; I
am an inheritor of shutter sounds, red light luster, and stop bath
fluid. Every few weeks, if only for a few hours, my dad swallowed
his grief and let us live. All the scraped knees bandaged and the
fevered breaths shushed, all the misty foreheads stifled under cold
cloths, all the sweet, lazy lullabies way past bedtime—all of that
has to add up to something. Right?
I always ask myself: what are my goals? What are my fears? I
suppose that is part of being a human being, the constant fear of
turning into a monster. The only difference between me and everyone else is that my wildness is inevitable. My father is famous
now, what they refer to as a “feral child” and the subject of both
scientific journals and horror films. All throughout his life chaos
followed him; he was infected by a parasitic rage that waxed and
waned with the love he lived and lacked. He was a bad man, but
a big man who gave life with all that he had and took life with
all that he had—or, perhaps, all that had him. It was not until he
grew grayer and was stamped still that he was realized this. So, uh, that’s all I wrote. Thank you, everyone, for coming. It really means a lot. Anyway, uh… Amen? Do I say that?
Right. Amen.
The sleepy mob of black cloth lowered its head and mumbled, each slumped figure not quite sure how to feel. Marie tugged
on her ribbons, fidgeting, Ellis yawned, Chris gazed off into the
distance. My father hung like a fog over all of us, licking his lips
and grinning, radiating that cloying beauty.
As his coffin was lowered into the ground, and the earth
swallowed up another one of its children, I breathed a sigh of
relief, fixed my cuff links, and squeezed my wife’s hand just hard
enough for her to feel it. She squeezed back, her left dimple
blinking into focus at the edge of her lips. At once, I knew that
everything was going to be okay. This was good. This was right.
This was what I needed.
18 Fieldston Upper School
Peter Dinella
Form V
Fiction
Obstructions: An Exercise
After reading Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau and watching The Five Obstructions by Lars Von Trier
Notation:
A small frozen yogurt store, just around 8:30 pm in lower Manhattan. A tall bearded man walks in seemingly on drugs. He is
wearing a pair of circular brimmed sunglasses and a long, dark
shirt. He walks up to the counter stumbling a bit and orders one
mango frozen yogurt. “Make sure it’s made with love, please,”
he requests to the man behind the counter. The man behind the
counter shrugs this off and then prepares the yogurt. “Would you
like sprinkles?” he asks. “Yes!” replies the man, thrusting his fist
up into the air. The cashier rings up the fro-yo and asks for a total
of $3.25. The man stares at the cashier for a moment or two. “It
wasn’t made with love,” he says and walks out the store.
Grocery List:
-milk
-eggs
-pasta
-oj
-fruit loops
-muffins (the small kind)
-lettuce
-tomatoes
-mango fro-yo from fro-yo fun (make sure it’s made with love)
Rhymes:
It is around 8:30, New York time,
In walks a man, likely in his prime.
He orders a yogurt, about medium sized,
But when he gets it, he’s not satisfied.
The yogurt wasn’t prepared with love,
So now he wants to give someone a shove.
He turns to the door and runs out,
I can’t see his face but I’m guessing there was a pout.
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One Syllable:
Come in the store he does. He wears strange clothes. He wears
some nice shades, but it is night. He is on drugs for sure. He
walks in a weird way and seems to trip with each step. He wants
some love in his food, that’s all he wants. No love is put in his
food. He gets mad so he leaves the store.
Haiku:
Man walks in the door
Sunglasses in the night time?
Quite questionable
Man wants some yogurt
But it must be made with love
He’s not satisfied
Inanimate Object:
I am a spoon. All a spoon wants to do is be used in some nice
soup or maybe some nice yogurt. Then a spoon can be happy
with his life. It was a regular day for a spoon. I was sleeping in a
bed with my spoon brothers, right next to our cousin fork when a
strange man came into the yogurt shop. He was a strange fellow.
Even though New York City is a strange place, he was stranger
than most. He was wearing sunglasses from some reason. Even a
spoon knows that it’s weird to wear sunglasses at night. Anyway
he ordered some yogurt but didn’t take it because he said it wasn’t
made with love. What is love anyway? Can someone please tell a
spoon?
Zoological:
After a day of raining cats and dogs, I settled in by the ribbiting
watering hole with the toadally amoosing elephants. Now a raccoon-faced bear gallops in, quite obviously with ants in his pants.
Now this raccoon bear thing is really fishy, I thought to myself.
Anyways he made a beeline straight to the watering hole, ambitiously pawing his way there. “Hold your horses!” I want to bark.
This strange orangutan approaches the fruit tree and prepares to
pig out. Then just when this mysterious macaw arrives, he has a
cow and storms off. Oh rats!
20 Fieldston Upper School
Precision:
In a frozen yogurt shop that is exactly 4,356 square feet, a man
of height 6 feet and 4.2 inches with a wingspan of 6 feet and 6.5
inches steps through the 8 foot polished glass doorframe. He
lets out a 1,762 millisecond sigh and walks 16 feet and 3 inches
towards the luminous orchid pink store counter. It takes him
5.5 seconds to haul his 193-lb frame to the counter. He orders a
bright neon mango yogurt that is served to him at exactly 28.3
degrees Fahrenheit in a plastic-lined green paper cup. He engages
in a conversation consisting of two sentences from each party,
each with under 10 words. The encounter lasts for a total of 27.3
seconds at which point the man had ran out the door, exiting with
a speed of 7.4 miles per hour.
Logical Analysis:
Frozen Yogurt.
Store.
Must be a frozen yogurt store.
It is dark out.
Must be late in the evening.
An employee.
A customer.
Must be making a purchase.
Young adult.
Tall.
Strange.
Must be the main character.
Me.
Seated.
Staring from a distance.
Must be an observer.
Noise from a mouth.
Not singing.
Must be a conversation.
A conversation between the man and employee.
The man leaves.
The froyo stays.
Must’ve not wanted the yogurt.
The yogurt is quality.
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21
There are many toppings.
Must’ve lacked something else.
Must’ve lacked love.
Tweet:
Some Ozzy Osbourne lookin dude just walked into Fro-Fun and
asked for his yogurt to be “made with love” #onlyinNYC
Iphone Update:
Funny Updates now
Man flees yogurt store after
supposedly claiming the employee
refused to make his yogurt with love
Swipe right to view
Oscar Speech:
I just want to start out by saying thanks to everyone who has
ever supported my dreams. You know, at a certain point in my
life I was stuck in a dark place. I had lost sight of what I wanted
to achieve, and I was just sort of stuck. I felt like one of those
gummy bears that gets trapped beneath a 16-oz serving of frozen
yogurt. Anyway this all changed, when someone taught me that
everyone thing you do must be done with love. This inspired me
to go after my dreams, and next thing you know I’m standing
here tonight. So, I want to tell all the young people listening that
sometimes you may have lost sight of the road, but just follow the
love and you will always be able to get back on track.
Thank you.
22 Fieldston Upper School
Anna McNulty
Form III
Critical Essay
Let Us Not Forget
Social Tragedy
A
ristotle is Western civilization’s authority on what
defines a tragedy. Aristotle stated that a tragedy is
“an imitation of an action that is serious, complete,
and of a certain magnitude...through pity and fear effecting the
proper purgation of these emotions” (Aristotle 1). He claimed
that the best tragedies have complex plots that have reversal and
recognition and a change in fortune. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
is a classic example of an Aristotelian tragedy, fitting Aristotle’s
definition because of its complex plot, imitation of an action,
change of fortune from good to bad, and the catharsis of pity
and fear. But Aristotle, born in 384 BCE, seems to not have
looked past the homogeneous society in which he lived when
he crafted his theory of tragedy. And while many aspects of the
Aristotelian definition of a tragedy still ring true today, Aristotle’s
definition is missing a key component of modern tragedy: social
tragedy. Social tragedy, “a collective representation of injustice,”
is a popular element of modern art because it addresses diversity
and discrimination in the human experience that leads to pain and
suffering for certain groups of people (Baker). The Color Purple by
Alice Walker is a powerful example of a social tragedy. While the
novel The Color Purple does not follow the Aristotelian model for a
tragedy the way the drama Oedipus the King does, Walker’s presentation of the truth behind the imitation of an action evokes the
immense pity and fear that Aristotle valued in a tragedy, providing
evidence that a social tragedy is just as powerful as any typical
Aristotelian tragedy.
In his Poetics, Aristotle laid out a cogent and compelling argument for what makes a tragedy. One literary work that epitomizes
the perfect Aristotelian tragedy is Sophocles’s Oedipus the King. In
the beginning of the play, Oedipus is viewed as a hero who saved
Thebes from the Sphinx by using his tactics and knowledge to
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answer a riddle. As the city is hit with a plague, Oedipus, being an
attentive king, is on a hunt to find and kill the murderer of Laius
because it is the only means of saving Thebes from sickness. But,
as the play goes on, Tiresias, the blind prophet, tells Oedipus: “I
say you are the murderer you hunt” and that Oedipus is “brother
and father both to the children he embraces” because Tiresias
predicts that Oedipus married his mother (Sophocles 180, 185).
The reversal and recognition that follows the Aristotelian complex
plot is instantaneous: Oedipus is now a fallen, tragic hero who is
on a sure and steady decline from good fortune to bad. Towards
the end of the play, Oedipus cannot live with his mistakes and
“rips off [Jocasta’s] brooches––and lifting them high, he digs
them down the sockets of his eyes” (Sophocles 237). Blinded, Oedipus asks Creon to take him away, alone, from Thebes. Oedipus
begins the play as “king of the land” and the “young hope of
Thebes,” but his downfall turns him into a “black sea of terror”
and his death will “free [Thebes] of pain at last” (Sophocles 160,
251). While the imitation in Oedipus the King of Oedipus’s downfall
may be distant and personally unknown to the audience, it nonetheless evokes pity for Oedipus and fear that Oedipus’s corrupt
world could become one’s own. Thus, by Aristotelian standards,
Oedipus the King is a perfect tragedy.
While The Color Purple doesn’t follow the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy, it conjures the same intense pity and fear that
Aristotle valued in a tragedy. Being a black woman during the early
1900s, Celie, the protagonist, is denied freedom and opportunity.
Celie wonders why America is just about white men “doing one
thing and another,” while “all the colored folks doing is gitting
cursed?” (Walker 194). Celie not only is discriminated against by
the color of her skin, but she is frequently raped by her father,
without having any power to fight back. When she cries, he “starts
to choke [her], saying you better shut up and git used to it” (Walker 1). Celie struggles as a black woman, whom society puts down
and does not protect. Unlike the quintessential Aristotelian tragedy, The Color Purple does not have a change in fortune from good
to bad because the book is set in a time when discrimination and
racism were always present––from the first page to the last page
Celie endures bad fortune. There is also no reversal or recognition
24 Fieldston Upper School
in The Color Purple. Celie does not suddenly realize she is subject to
injustice and her life does not quickly become unjust; rather, she
is born into her grave conditions. One could argue that The Color
Purple is, in fact, an imitation of an action, but the difference is
that the imitation in this book is prevalent and frequent in society.
Whereas in a typical Aristotelian tragedy the imitated action may
seem outside of the audience’s reality, in a social tragedy like The
Color Purple, humans cannot distance themselves from the imitation––in this case, racial prejudice and sexual assault––because it
comes from a place of truth that all people can recognize in their
own experience or that of others. Yet The Color Purple is a tragedy
because it stimulates the catharsis of pity and fear as the audience
witnesses the unspeakable hatred and hardship that black people
experience in America.
Thus, perhaps the essential defining characteristic of a tragedy is the emotion it evokes. While it doesn’t have an Aristotelian
complex plot, The Color Purple is a social tragedy that kindles the
same emotions as an Aristotelian tragedy. Both Walker’s novel and
Sophocles’s play have the same cathartic effect on their audiences,
though they employ different structures and literary techniques to
get there. The tragedy in Oedipus the King is the devastating downfall of Oedipus from the hero of Thebes to a corrupt man who
killed his father and married his mother. The tragedy has a strong
effect because of the reversal of the plot and the recognition of
the abnegating king. But in The Color Purple, Celie has experienced
racism throughout her whole life –– there is no reversal or recognition in her pain. The narratives and stories of her struggles
kindle an emotional response in the audience that is a match for
even the most heart-rending of Aristotelian tragedies. What ties
all tragedies together is the catharsis of pity and fear. Aristotle
never mentioned social tragedy in his Poetics, but that may have
been the result of the times in which he lived––when there was
little consideration of class and racial injustice. However, whether
Aristotle approves is not the issue. If the evocation of pity and
fear is the barometer, then social tragedy has the potential to be
even more powerful than the traditional tragedies that Aristotle
elevated. For while Aristotelian tragedies depend on aesthetic ele-
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25
ments to affect the audience, modern social tragedies hit a deeply
personal chord with the reader that has the potential to not only
linger in the reader’s consciousness but to potentially impact his
or her behavior.
Writing styles and subject matter reflect the worldview of
the author. Even though only sections of Aristotle’s Poetics were
read, one can surmise that Aristotle did not look past his homogeneous society when defining a tragedy. Since Aristotle lived in a
uniform society, he may not have been aware of the tragic impact
of discrimination and racism. Thus, Aristotle’s tragic heroes were
often white men of privileged status. Aristotle claims that tragic
actions occur “between those who are near or dear to one another,” which is what happens to Oedipus (Aristotle 9). But people
who are “near or dear” to kings and other people of power are
certainly not the only members of society who experience tragedy.
Social tragedy calls attention to the pity and fear endured by the
common people. Interestingly, Oedipus the King, a classic example
of an Aristotelian tragedy, can also be read as a social tragedy. For
instance, in Oedipus the King, the corruption and danger in society
as a result of the personal lives of kings is a “collective representation of injustice”––the main criteria for a social tragedy (Baker). Even if Aristotle didn’t mention social tragedy in his Poetics
or in Oedipus the King, his oversight does not deny social tragedy’s
impact or importance.
Works Cited
“Social Tragedy—The Power of Myth, Ritual, and Emotion | S. Baker | Palgrave
Macmillan.” Social Tragedy—The Power of Myth, Ritual, and Emotion | S. Baker |
Palgrave Macmillan. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
Sophocles, Robert Fagles, and Bernard Knox. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone;
Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus . Print.
“The Internet Classics Archive | Poetics by Aristotle.” The Internet Classics Archive |
Poetics by Aristotle. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Print.
26 Fieldston Upper School
Leora Shlasko
Form IV
Assembly Speech
Not All of Us Are Nannies
M
y name is Leora, and I am biracial and Asian
American. There were lots of things I wanted to
talk about at this assembly, one of them being the
unfortunate series of double standards that biracial kids live with,
but on Monday night I decided to talk about stereotypes: how
identity is so much more than conventional classifications, i.e.: a
person’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation.
Asian stereotypes impact how Asians view themselves and
how they present themselves to others, even if said stereotype is
seemingly insignificant. I feel obligated to address a few of the
stereotypes, a few of the single stories familiar to Asians, myself
included.
The first stereotype is classic. We all know it. It’s Asian
Stereotype 101: all Asians love and are good at math and science.
It could be true for some people and not true for others—but
whatever you think, don’t bring it up, even if it’s a joke.
I know I’m Filipino, and we’re supposed to be the only
Asians bad at math, but those of you who shame me before my
community and my “people” because I’m in Level 3 Math make
me self-conscious. I only have these words for you: I don’t want
to be a mathematician when I grow up; most people don’t plan
on being mathematicians when they grow up; and my parents
know that, too. And guess what? They haven’t disowned me!
The second stereotype is that all Asians are adopted, which is
true for some people, but not all, especially for me. This stereotype creates an environment where people always ask me if I’m
adopted, even though I’m not.
It’s funny because when I was little I didn’t know what adoption was. It was a concept that didn’t make any sense until my
mom explained it. Even then my understanding of it was messed
up. She told me it was when “someone’s mommy isn’t their real
Inklings 2016
27
mommy… which means they might not look alike, etc.” I thought
people said about me—“Oh she’s definitely adopted!”—because
I didn’t look like my mom. But the truth was that people thought
I was adopted because I had mono-lids or “Asian eyes” and a skin
tone different from my white father’s.
The thing that surprised the five-year-old Leora was that
whenever my sisters and I would go out with my dad, without my
mom, strangers would come up to us and say, “Oh my god! Your
daughters are so adorable!” But the next thing they said would
always be, “Your kids are so cute! Where’d you get them?”
This confused me on so many levels, the first one being: how
could I be adopted if I looked like my mommy? The second one
was that they said it as if we were property, too; as if I was that
Canada Goose jacket you wanted from Barneys, as if we were the
spring’s hot new styles. I mean, they could’ve just said, “What are
THOSE?” Where did you get those shoes, I want to get myself a
pair! But “where’d you get them?” Really, for a person?
I constantly replay these memories because they remind me
that I’m more than what is visible to the eye. It’s my reminder
that I have the privilege of having two sides to my identity. I have
the privilege of being more than the physical part of me. The
privilege of being Filipina, the physical piece of me that you can
all see, and the privilege of celebrating the Jewish, Italian, Russian,
and Polish cultures that are also part of me at the same time
Although I have this great privilege, I am disadvantaged
because people who don’t know me and people quick to come to
conclusions because of racial stereotypes cast a huge part of me
aside.
The disadvantage of being judged so quickly: that is what
stereotypes do to every person they affect.
When I remember that many people have asked my father,
“Where did you get them?” it’s my reminder that yes, people are
quick to judge, but most importantly that identity is more than
what is visible to the eye.
The other stereotype that affects me is important to discuss
in this assembly.
28 Fieldston Upper School
Who here has had a babysitter? Who here has had a Filipina
babysitter? For those of you who aren’t sure if your babysitter
was Filipina, if you had to call her “Yaya,” she was Filipina.
I don’t know if you guys know this, but at Ethical they had a
block patrol that parents were mandated to do once a year (I think
they stopped it).
When my mom’s patrol came, a Fieldston mother went
right up to her and said, “You know, babysitters aren’t supposed
to be doing this, and I just want to let you know that I’m telling
whoever is in charge that your boss is slacking on the work that all
parents have to do—which is take care of their kids. What do you
have to say about that?”
My mother, an immigrant, a nurse, a caregiver, a feminist, a
hard worker, was outraged.
She worked her ass off to become a nurse in a new country and along that route she had to abandon her home. She had
sacrificed her interest in the arts to be where her kids would have
opportunities to advance. Despite this, she was degraded because
a white woman judged her by her looks, and in that woman’s eyes
she looked like a nanny.
So my mother said, “I am the mother of Gabrielle, Sara, and
Leora Ballon Shlasko. I left work early today so I could protect
the students of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School from people
who are either physically trying to harm our children or those who
are trying to infest their minds with unethical and racist ideas that
go against what we are trying to teach them. My name is Neonita
Ballon Shlasko.”
I am Asian American. I am biracial. I am half Filipina and
half Polish and Italian, even though physically, I look Filipina. I
use she/her pronouns. I am a little sister, I am a daughter, I strive
to be an ethical learner, I am a musician, I believe there is more
to people’s identities than what others make of them, and I am
feminist.
My name is Leora Ballon Shlasko.
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Alex Greenberg
Form V
Poem
Drainage
“Christina Madrazo, a transsexual immigrant,
was placed in solitary confinement in May 2000
where she was raped twice by a prison guard.”
(Dissident Voice)
there was a day you couldn’t stop swallowing
you were that empty
a little girl in your throat, trembling
you wanted so badly to slip your thumb
in her mouth and let her suck on it,
her tongue like a virgin lake bathing a body
for the first time.
all of the guards who looked at you
like a piece of food fingered from their teeth
coming back to memory.
no
he will not watch his mouth
when he enters your body
or remember your name.
he will spit on your welcome mat, make you forget
how soft breathing can be.
by the third year you didn’t have enough hands
to pray with so you stopped praying.
30 Fieldston Upper School
you gossiped about your own body to whoever
would listen
stood in the center of the cell, your mouth
opening and closing opening and closing.
you knew no other way to ask for help.
what else to do but shatter the vessel?
can you really call it sacrilege after all that has happened?
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31
Hallie Gruder
Form VI
Critical Essay
Chaucer’s Cunning
On the Prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale
I
n her prologue in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the
Wife of Bath surprises readers with her bold display
of sexuality, her rejection of marital conventions, and
her mockery of patriarchal ecclesiastical rhetoric. She freely
talks about her five marriages, her husbands’ genitals, her own
genitals, and her skill in using sex to control her husbands and
their money. To a modern reader, she almost seems like a sexually
liberated proto-feminist. But is she really? The answer is more
complicated than one would expect. Despite the Wife’s audacious
and immodest sexual rhetoric, she wants to do to men what they
do to women—control them, manipulate them, objectify them.
In so doing, she ends up replicating, not dismantling, a repressive
gender structure. In the end, the reader wonders whether she
vindicates women or reinforces the church’s negative vision of
women and wives.
The Wife of Bath begins her prologue by discussing her extensive personal experience with marriage. To the Wife, this lived
experience gives her a special authority on marriage: “Experience,
though no authority/ in this world, is good enough for me,/ to
speak of the woe that is in marriage/. . . men may conjecture
and interpret every way, but I know expressly” (Lines 1-4, 27-29).
Here the Wife sets up a dichotomy: men have scriptural knowledge that they use to judge and dictate what women do with their
bodies; woman like the Wife of Bath have personal experience.
The Wife is progressive in suggesting that women’s personal,
experiential knowledge is equally valid as men’s formal, abstract,
scriptural knowledge. This calls into question the accepted social
equation: men are rational and, therefore, good; women are emotional and, therefore, bad.
32 Fieldston Upper School
Though the Wife of Bath asserts that experience is more important than “masculine” ecclesiastic knowledge, she nonetheless
gives several scriptural arguments designed to justify her multiple
marriages, showing that she is just as deft as churchmen in scriptural analysis and rational argumentation. She boldly confronts
men on the Scripture:
Men may conjecture and interpret in every way/
But well I know . . . God commanded us to grow
fruitful and multiply;/That gentle text I can well understand. . . [it] made no mention of number,/ Of
marrying two, or of marrying eight;/Why should
men then speak evil of it? (Lines 26-34)
Here, the Wife challenges the notion that Biblical analysis and
moral argumentation are men’s province and that women are incapable of rational, moral thought, or, moreover, that women are
incapable of manipulating rhetoric from Scripture to further their
ends. She demonstrates her understanding both of what Scripture
says and what it omits. The message is clear: the Wife, too, has
mastered the art of rhetorical deception and scriptural manipulation. She speaks men’s language and knows their techniques. She
lays bare the rhetorical foundations of male authority, showing it
to be little more than verbal trickery.
Yet the reader can see that the Wife of Bath’s use of the
Bible to support her actions is just as deceptive as men’s use of
the Bible to argue against women’s sexual mastery and manipulation. Moreover, Chaucer invites us to laugh at her inept use and
misunderstanding of sacred texts: “For had God commanded
maidenhood,/Then had he damned marriage/ along with the act
(of procreation),/And certainly, if there were no seed sown,/
Then from what should virginity grow?” (Lines 69-72)
In order to justify her five marriages, she rationalizes that
without procreation there would be no virgins. This chopped logic
plays into stereotypes that women are emotional, irrational, and
misguided. Her misuse of Scripture also plays into stereotypes
that women are incapable of intellectual discourse. Each reference
to the Bible only reveals her lack of textual understanding. Additionally, the absurdity of the Wife of Bath’s Biblical analysis could,
in fact, be Chaucer’s tacit criticism of contemporary ministers.
Inklings 2016
33
Moreover, neither her arguments from experience nor her
scriptural arguments help to validate women’s power and intellectual prowess. Her goal is neither to advance a new vision of
women nor a new vision of equitable marriage:
“A husband I will have—I will not desist—/Who
shall be both my debtor and my slave/And have his
suffering also/Upon his flesh, while I am his wife./I
have the power during all my life/Over his own
body, and not he” (Lines 154-159).
Her use of commercial and political language—“debtor,”
“slave,” “power”—indicates her will to subjugate her husbands, to
rule them and control their property as well as their bodies. The
Wife does not argue to free married women from manipulation
and control; she rather argues to invert the power structure so
that women are on top and men on bottom.
Finally, her language, full of sexual innuendo, crude jokes,
and vulgarity, reinforces the view that women are wanton, sexual,
lowly creatures, incapable of lofty thought or noble action. She
chooses her husbands not by rational and pious consideration
but by sexual instinct and avarice: “I have picked out the best
men, both of their lower purse (scrotum) and of their strongbox”
(Lines 44a-44b). Women, she shows, are motivated by desire, not
restraint: desire to satisfy their lust, avarice, and greed. This only
confirms the stereotype that women are incapable of making
rational and pious decisions and, therefore, need men to control
them. The Wife’s seemingly insatiable lust supports the notion
that women must be restrained for their own good and for the
good of their husbands.
In a cunning way, Chaucer reads us as we read the text.
Modern readers want to see a proto-feminist trailblazer. Religious readers from Chaucer’s era want to confirm their notion of
women’s moral weakness. But none of his readers is exempt from
Chaucer’s acid wit. He mocks the hypocrisy of social institutions:
marriage, the church, and the patriarchal social structure. He
mocks the behavior of women as well as the behavior of men. He
uncovers our weaknesses, ignorance, and base motives and, in so
doing, forces us to see ourselves.
34 Fieldston Upper School
Sundari Sheldon-Collins
Form III
Poem
Swallowing Uniformity
O
ur minds, aligned, in one
straight line.
We’re taught to be ourselves, but
it’s so much easier to just
copy
stories.
“Is it okay if I lie? That one is so much more interesting than
mine.”
The world is full of falsehoods and they will always say that
“this color would look nice on you”
It blends in with that mirror on your face.
It really does reflect the fact that you
“don’t think for yourself! Our tablet does that for you”
You walk down the street
in someone else’s shoes, heavier than the stigmas that they choke
down, down, down, your throat.
Breathe. Breathe.
Swallow.
Why be yourself when someone else is open for the
taking?
Inklings 2016
35
Selfless Manhood
Noah Knopf
Form VI
Critical Essay
F
eminism and women’s studies have exposed barbaric and misogynistic facets of society. In this light,
manhood is an antiquated tradition of oppression
designed to keep men in power and women contained on the
fringes. There is plenty to be said about the negative impact of
manhood on Western culture, but the merits of manhood are
seldom studied. Manhood has evolved through history and across
the globe as a means of societal preservation and growth, a set
of cultural expectations and rules conducive to the survival and
prosperity of humanity as a whole. Manhood, in this way, is actually worth examining as an instrument of positive cultural value.
Manhood exists as a way to live in the world, a prescribed,
implicit ideology on par with philosophical and theological
concepts of what it means to be human. And like nearly all such
ideas, manhood requires the surmounting of what renowned
writer David Foster Wallace calls the “default setting.” As Foster
Wallace explains, it is a natural human tendency “to be deeply and
literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through
this lens of self.” Manhood, above all, forces the abandonment of
this “childish narcissism that is not only different from the adult
role, but antithetical to it,” as David Gilmore, author of Manhood
in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity, puts it. It requires the
creation of others with whom to share a life, the protection of
these new kin, and the provision of the family with the necessities of survival. Taken together, these three essential tenets of
manhood contribute both to the growth and prosperity of society
as a whole and to the maturity and character of men as individuals. Manhood “sanctifies male constructivity,” and for this reason
it has held and continues to hold a deep moral and cultural value
(Gilmore).
Chief among the three essential tenets of manhood stands
the requirement to protect family and the group. Fighting for the
36 Fieldston Upper School
safety of others necessitates that a man completely discards the
value of his own life. He must voluntarily put himself in harm’s
way and forgo his own safety on behalf of those he treasures
most. In doing so, he places himself on the outermost edges of
his personal world and glimpses life truly outside the narrowing
“lens of self.” “For the pious man,” the philosopher Abraham
Joshua Heschel writes, “it is a privilege to die.”
Although the value of protection might manifest itself differently around the world, each and every culture’s expectations
of manly protection stem from this idea of self-sacrifice. The
epitome of this selfless protection is the New Guinea ‘Big Man,’
an unofficial tribal head who has “achieved, not inherited, a leadership role through personal acts of derring-do that prop up his
village or tribe” (Gilmore). This earned status highlights the Big
Man’s willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the rest of the group;
he voluntarily assumes his post through hard work, charisma, and
acts of selflessness, not through selfish toughness or bullying.
The Big Man is the subject of respect, and his first duty to the
tribe is as “a leader of war” (Gilmore). He is “a military strategist,” but he does not cower behind this safe and unadventurous
role alone; instead, the Big Man “leads his troops into battle,
setting an example by bravely disdaining clouds of arrows and
spears” (Gilmore). A selfless protector in every way, the Big Man
earns his manhood through war, risking his life on the battlefield
and overcoming his “default setting” in doing so.
Similarly, the Samburu and Masai of East Africa value a
man’s ability to protect and serve his tribe on a more widespread
basis measured through a demanding rite of passage. Among the
Samburu and Masai, every man must undergo a near decade-long
period of moranhood, a period during which he must learn the
skills to protect others in the wild of the bush. The Samburu
and Masai ability to protect is based largely on a man’s ability to
endure pain voluntarily because of the high-risk territory in which
he must work, and, as such, “the first test for the boys entering
moranhood is that of the traumatic circumcision procedure.”
According to Gilmore, during this “intensely painful” operation,
the young ‘moran’ is expected to remain motionless, and even the
“slightest movement” elicits a lifetime of shaming. Although it
Inklings 2016
37
may seem unfair or harsh, this selective rite of passage is conducive to the success of Samburu and Masai society as it breeds only
warriors fit to protect the tribe, forcing the moran to overcome
his inherently selfish fears of pain and suffering in favor of the
group’s well-being. With these intensely painful tests already
behind him, the young moran is prepared to meet the challenges
facing his tribe such as cattle raids and wild predators. Similar
to the values of the New Guinea Big Man, the Samburu and
Masai’s “construction of manhood encompasses not only physical
strength or bravery but also a moral beauty construed as a selfless
devotion to national identity” (Gilmore). In order to become a
man, one has to pass the test of selflessness and prove how much
he is willing to suffer and sacrifice for his people.
A third, most extreme example of selflessness is the kamikaze and bushido inspired culture of Japan’s Hard School of
manhood. During World War II, when the suicide pilots were still
in action, Japanese manhood was deeply based on the concept of
mutual obligations. “The entire purpose of a man’s life,” writes
Gilmore, “was to repay the debts he had accumulated to parents…and to the collectivity.” With “little expectation of a reward
in an afterlife,” the Japanese pilots were taking the philosophy
embodied by the Big Men, Samburu and Masai to a new level,
voluntarily accepting certain death for their country. Although
Japanese men no longer offer their lives as Kamikaze pilots, the
concept of obligation continues to influence Japanese manhood
to this day, an example of manhood’s role as a positive influence
in the development of society.
But what of today’s advanced world where protection from
predators and rival tribes is no longer a relevant concern? Manhood plays a role in promoting self-sacrifice in the face of danger
in industrialized nations as well. Consider the respect and aura
surrounding the fireman, one of today’s most manly risk-takers.
“The fireman became an icon of heroism,” writes Mark Tebeau in
Eating Fire, “at a time when, in the face of industrialization, manhood itself seemed to be in decline.” Or perhaps, in accordance
with manhood’s ability to enforce positive male behavior, they are
men, and for that reason they protect us. Even today, manhood
still holds such a strong value that it influences men to risk their
38 Fieldston Upper School
lives in the service of others.
Feminists are right: manhood is problematic. But manhood
exists, even today, as a structure meant to enforce constructive
behavior in men so that society can continue to thrive. “This is
the genius of culture,” Gilmore writes, “to reconcile individual
with group goals.” Manhood so understood carries immense
power: a system of honor understood by all at an implicit level.
The idea of self-sacrifice essential to manhood and embodied in
the requirement of protection is constantly at work, making the
world a better place, and, if properly understood, especially by
men themselves, manhood has the potential to be a strong agent
of morality and growth.
Works Cited
Foster Wallace, David. Commencement address, Kenyon College, 2005. http://
moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words
Gilmore, David D. Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity. New
Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1990. Print.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology. Comp. Samuel
H. Dresner. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Print.
Tebeau, Mark. Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800-1950. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 2003. Google Books. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.
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Hakeem Adeyemi
Form VI
Assembly Speech
Toxic Masculinity
I
never saw myself fit into the confines of popular black
masculinity. When I was a kid, the typical images and stories I saw didn’t reflect my own experience. In the popular media, the only black men I saw were athletes, rappers, and the
criminals plastered on news channels. Born too late for The Cosby
Show and The Fresh Prince, I settled for one-dimensional images of
black men as one-liner token characters and as drug dealers and
felons on cop shows because there was nothing else. I quickly
realized that there was no room for me in this narrative, like a
fervently traded Pokemon card at my elementary school lunch
table. I craved to see a story about a plucky ten-year-old from
the Bronx who liked to read, dance, and ride his bike down his
neighborhood block without a helmet, no matter what his mother
told him. Ironically, I most identified with Veron and Cory Baxter
on That’s So Raven—while today Raven Symone is doing horrible
damage toward the Black community and believes she is from
every continent in Africa. Nevertheless, I grew up doubting the
authenticity of my blackness, both because I am a black student
in a predominantly white institution but also because I did not fit
into the standards for black masculinity.
Recently, football player Odell Beckham, Jr., has been at the
heart of much controversy because he refuses to conform to
societal standards. He exploded onto the scene because of his
undeniable talent, but he has also faced challenges because of
attacks on his masculinity. Because of his flamboyance on the
field and his choreographed Instagram dancing videos off of it,
rumors have been circulating about his sexual orientation. People
often say that Beckham is gay, and they pose it as a challenge to
manhood. There are numerous issues with those claims, such as
heteronormativity, and the dissociation of masculinity and gayness. Odell Beckham, Jr., is not representative of the typical black
40 Fieldston Upper School
football player because he would not comply with the constraints
that so many others blindly follow, for fear of being prosecuted
and effectively losing the privileges of their masculinity. And although these pressures are present for all men, they are especially
constricting for black men.
But it’s more than just our mindsets and reputations at stake.
In fact, it’s our very livelihood. The stereotype of black hypermasculinity doesn’t just affect those it oppresses, but it’s also
ingrained in the mindset of the oppressor. The same dangerous
standards that limit how black men can express themselves—and
ostracize those that don’t adhere to them—are the very same
rules that allow a police officer to execute twelve-year-old Tamir
Rice. In the cases of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin,
Emmett Till, the stereotype of black hypermasculinity has robbed
them of their childhood, innocence, lives, and sympathy in many
an American imagination. For example, without hesitation or,
frankly, rational thought, Officer Tim Loehmann noticed Tamir’s
blackness, decided he was a threat, and took away his life. Darren
Wilson went as far as to describe Michael Brown as an otherworldly demon. Their blackness provoked fear and amplified their
danger in the eyes of white America. And even in death, they
aren’t safe as their images are tarnished and scrutinized to fit the
stereotype of black men.
And we can pretend that the officer was the lone perpetrator
of racism, just as we do for the white power terrorists who are
diagnosed as lone gunman, but these tragedies are the direct result
of white supremacy and the systematic racism that is so deeply
ingrained in our society. Black hypermasculinity has its roots in
slavery, as black men were compared to savage beasts and predators, who needed to be corralled by their white counterparts, and
that legacy is alive and well to this very day. On a political and
societal level, it’s why Maine Governor Paul LePage alluded to
stereotypes when he said his state needed to protect itself against
black drug dealers named “D-Money,” “Shifty,” and “Smoothie”
who were supposedly infiltrating his state to sell their product and
impregnate white women. And it’s also why Ben Lewis has had
more people crossing the street at the sight of him than he can
count.
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To end I want to recite an excerpt from Saul Williams’ famous poem “Coded Language”:
Let your children name themselves
and claim themselves as the new day
for Today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies
Into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry
Crafts, love, and love
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference
Every person as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to
Uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
42 Fieldston Upper School
Natalie White
Form VI
Essay
Filling The Stands
T
he sound of stomping feet echoed through the gym.
The sea of orange and blue roared from the sideline
of the court all the way out the door. The bleachers
shook from middle and high school students, faculty, and parents
cheering and holding up signs for their favorite player. The faces
of middle schoolers were painted orange and blue, while next to
them high schoolers yelled through bullhorns, holding up colorful
posters. Senior boys jumping in the first row had FIELDSTON
painted across their chests. Parents waved Fieldston towels and
cheered for their sons, and even the teacher who did not say hello
to students outside of class was shaking pompoms and chanting,
“I believe that we will win.”
It was Fieldston’s winter homecoming, the biggest home
basketball games of the year—the event players anticipated most,
making up for the sprints, the five-hour Saturday practices, and
the weeks of lifting in October. The boys were down by two
points with only thirty seconds left in the game. As the clock
ticked down, the crowd yelled “DE-FENSE, DE-FENSE!” With
twenty seconds left, Fieldston’s senior captain, Tristian, stole the
ball and put us back on offense. The crowd screamed his name
with pride and raised up posters of his face that were larger than
the fans holding them. Although the same age as other students,
these boys were transformed into superior icons that everyone
was infatuated with. The rival defense swarmed around him until
he was forced to give up a bad pass. Our star shooter got the ball
and attempted to get the lead with a baseline 3-point shot. The
ball ricocheted off the back of the rim, and the win went straight
into the hands of our rivals.
I was leading the girls’ basketball team in pre-game stretches
in the corner, excited to play in front of the enthusiastic crowd.
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43
But when the boy’s final buzzer went off, the girls walked toward
the bench, and the crowd walked toward the door. We went into the
locker room to go over the game plan and talk as a team. I told my
teammates to stay confident in the game no matter what happens,
to keep pushing when we get tired, and to have each others’ backs.
The huddle was shaking from a mixture of excitement and nerves.
We knew we could bring down our biggest rival, especially with
the school cheering us on. We were excited to show our friends,
parents, faculty, and fans what we had been working on this entire
year; I was proud of the hard work and dedication each of my
teammates had shown. We got into two lines and prepared to burst
out of the locker room, awaiting the thunderous applause that had
happened before the previous game. I swung open the doors to
find that I was leading my team into an empty gym. The bleachers
were filled with cans and bottles, plates of half-eaten pizza, opened
bags of chips, ripped posters of the boys, and broken pompoms.
The last few fans that remained were stepping over the trash to
leave the gym.
We divided ourselves at half court and began to warm up with
layup lines. While waiting to get the pass, I heard the lingering fans
asking each other, “What are you up to now?”, not even considering watching the game that they saw was about to take place
before them. I caught the pass and decided to take a three-point
shot instead. Swish. I smiled and looked out to the bleachers again.
No one saw. No students, no teachers. Only the six parents that
had stayed. My pride instantly disappeared and instead I became
filled with feelings of embarrassment and shame. We had worked
every single day—doing the same drills hundreds of times, running
sprints until we threw up, and practicing ball handling until we
couldn’t feel our arms—for a game no one would see. We practiced
just as hard as the boys, but still the crowd was unconvinced our
game was worth staying for. At a school that prides itself on being
progressive, non-discriminatory, and supportive, not one student
stayed to watch us girls play.
I should not have been surprised. Not only in high school, but
also in college and professional sports, there is little support for
female athletes. These women receive significantly less recognition
than their male counterparts. Among six professional American
44 Fieldston Upper School
sports leagues, there is only one women’s league—the WNBA.
This means that only 16% of athletes playing in a professional
league are women. Even at this professional level, the stands at
women’s games are practically empty. In 2014, the average attendance for a WNBA game was only 7,578 This is drastically lower
than that of an NBA game—17,407. In other words, women’s
games only fill 43% of the NBA stands. Additionally, the WNBA
does not get nearly as many views on television. The average
TV viewership for the WNBA finals in 2012 was 427,750, while
in that same year 16,855,000 tuned in to watch the men’s finals.
The women’s finals viewership is only 2% of the men’s. Some
might claim that the reason not as many people support women’s
basketball is because the level of play is lower; however, this is
an uninformed argument. In 2002, the average NBA three-point
shooting percentage was .354, while the same statistic in the
WNBA was .350, only .004 percent lower. This past year the free
throw shooting percentages were equal between the NBA and the
WNBA at .771 Although many components of the two leagues
are equal, one difference is the immense amount of dunking in
the NBA. Americans are now less interested in advanced offensive sets and defensive styles, and instead enjoy being amused
by circus dunks. Unfortunately for female athletes, the dunk has
grown to be equated with skill in the minds of many Americans.
This uninformed and narrow mindset has evolved from the
Magic Johnson and Darryl Dawkins era when flashy dunks first
started. The dunk has become a staple move in men’s basketball, and a move that created an unnecessary separation between
men’s and women’s basketball. There is not less talent in women’s
sports, not less scoring, not less athleticism, not less dedication,
not less work, not less hustle, not less grit, not less love for the
game. However, there is tragically less respect, acknowledgement,
and support.
There is a prevailing dismissiveness from society towards
female basketball players that originates from these women not
fitting into the stereotypical feminine mold. The lack of respect
and support is not due to any factor other than their gender and
appearance. The traditional American culture likes to think of
women as dependent, emotional, sensitive, nurturing, innocent,
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45
and weak—while men are seen as aggressive, competitive, strong,
confident, and independent. Female athletes perfectly embody
these male characteristics, but it infringes on the American man’s
superior sense of identity. Take Brittney Griner for example, a
6’8”, 207-pound aggressive and tough woman. She dominated in
college, scoring 3,283 career points, yet is best known because she
can dunk, and because people think she is a man. Tabloids and
American culture are unable to accept her and her characteristics
as feminine, and therefore continue to accuse her of being a man.
These strong women challenge and strengthen not only their role
in society, but the place of all females. This is the very reason that
female athletes are not portrayed for their athletic abilities but
rather for their bodies in tabloid magazines.
When I was young I used to flip through Sports Illustrated
frequently. I admired the strong athletes, and I never noticed anything wrong with the magazine until last year after the Winterfest
game. Flipping through page after page of bulky supermen, I
noticed that the female athletes portrayed in the magazine looked
nothing like they did on the playing field. The strongest, most
aggressive soccer players turned into sex objects on the beach.
Pictures of Skylar Diggins, one of the best basketball players
Notre Dame has ever seen, lying in the sand barely clothed, while
the next page displays Stephen Curry shooting a three-pointer. Although they have the same job, society dislikes the strong, aggressive image of the female athlete and therefore media conforms
the athletes back into a degrading, more feminine, place. Tabloids
choose to show photos of female athletes that portray them in
a submissive, sexy, and weak light, an image that is the complete
opposite of their appearance on the court or field.
This degrading image of the female athlete prizes her body
over her athletic ability and accomplishments, and therefore
reinforces the cultural ideology that the most important aspect of
women is still their beauty. After the legalization of gay marriage and strides in transgender awareness and gender issues, our
country has fallen prey to the illusion that we have broken out of
gender norms. Even through the various cultural changes, society
continues to subconsciously cling on to the pure, nurturing, dependent, and feminine picture of a woman.
46 Fieldston Upper School
Pictures in magazines that skew these women’s true confidence and strength into images of submission are not the answer.
Instead, they should portray all female athletes the way the
University of Connecticut’s Women’s Basketball team is shown.
The UConn Women’s Basketball program is the one of—if not
the—most highly accomplished and respected college basketball
programs in the nation and is publicized as such. These ladies
are praised for their extraordinary talent and are always featured
fully clothed, and usually on the court. This is the respect that all
strong female players deserve. The media should no longer have
to alter the true image of female athletes because society prefers
to view them in an inferior light. We can no longer excuse the
lack of respect and support for women’s sports on the absence
of athleticism or skill, but recognize that it is humiliatingly still
countercultural for a woman to be aggressive, strong, and confident. These tough, independent women deserve to be recognized
for what they truly are: athletes. This widespread acknowledgment
starts at home. It does not mean that every person in America
needs to watch the WNBA religiously, or follow all famous female
athletes; but simply that the next time fans notice a high school
girls’ team warming up after the boys, and are asked “What are
you up to now?” their response will be, “Staying to support the
girls.”
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47
Victoria Smith
Form VI
Assembly Speech
Black Women Activists Matter
E
lla Baker was a strong and influential woman of color
who for nearly half a century refused to let social
constructs prevent her from creating change within
the nation. Her legacy lives on today, and she has been a trailblazer for many young men and women of color, even though her
accomplishments are almost never mentioned in history classes.
However, that begs an important question: why isn’t Baker
talked about as much as King or Rosa Parks? Why do we have a
Martin Luther King Jr. day, but no Ella Baker day?
To go a step further, why don’t we have any days commemorating the many achievements and strides women of color have
made in the fight for social justice and equality?
There is not a dearth of black female excellence to choose
from, and history continues to show us that in the face of adversity, black women always rise to the occasion to fight for those
without a voice.
It’s time to publicly acknowledge their work.
The most recent example of the work of black women for
the civil rights movement—which, let’s be real, is far from over—
is the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.
Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors are three
queer women of color who took this movement from social
media to the streets in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal
in the Trayvon Martin case. Garza noticed various adaptations of
their work (i.e., migrant lives matter, women’s lives matter, and so
on) arising in mainstream culture, and one organization asked if
they could use “Black Lives Matter” in a campaign. She agreed,
under the condition that the organization acknowledge the genesis
of the movement and the people who created it. The organization
did the exact opposite, changed “Black Lives Matter” to “All Lives
48 Fieldston Upper School
Matter,” failed to give credit to Garza, Tometi, and Cullors, and
applauded incarceration by perverting the original message to
justify the criminalization and dehumanization of black bodies.
The origins of their work were completely erased, a fact Garza
strongly noted in an interview, saying, “When you design an event
or campaign based on the work of queer black women, don’t
invite them to participate in shaping it, but ask them to provide
materials and ideas for next steps for said event—that is racism in
practice. Straight men, unintentionally or intentionally, have taken
the work of queer black women and erased their contributions.
Perhaps if [these women] were the charismatic black men many
are rallying around these days, it would have been a different story, but being a black queer women in this society (and apparently
within these movements) tends to equal invisibility and non-relevancy.”
This is an all too familiar sentiment and experience black
women have been battling since the inception of this nation. Ella
Baker was not queer, nor am I, nor are millions of other black
women, so I cannot relate to Garza’s comments on every level.
However, we can relate to the feeling of disappointment, fear,
and frustration that arises when our ideas and voices are changed
and commodified to become more palpable for mainstream
society.
It is also extremely frustrating when our ideas suddenly become more relevant and acceptable when anyone but us,
specifically men, speak our truths. Ella Baker served on the same
committees as King, had just as much passion for equal rights,
if not more because she was a woman as well as black, and had
very similar ideas. She could have easily been the president of
the SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but
her gender rendered her invisible—a battle black women are still
facing today.
We cannot remember King and forget Baker because to do
so would be to give into the tradition of remembering male voices over female, making us all accountable in the crime of allowing
those with more power and social capital to tell the story. Black
women can create movements and have ideas, but daring to take
credit for their work? That’s still a little too bold.
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49
Imitation is flattering. Appropriation is not. All too often
black women’s work gets taken by other groups who have the
audacity to nip, tuck, and dilute their work and then present it as
their own to the masses. What starts off as a well-thought-out
idea or movement gets twisted into a half-baked presentation that
conveniently leaves out the harder truths to accept. There is nothing wrong with using our ideas, but give credit where credit is due.
If you can cite your sources for an essay and remember all the
words to Miley and Iggy’s songs, you should be able to remember
three black women’s names.
50 Fieldston Upper School
Lewis Arnsten
Form III
Critical Essay
The Role of a
Manly Woman
Exploring Gender Roles in Macbeth
I
n Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s defiant,
manly figure projects feminism, while later in the play
women conform to stereotypes on a personal and national scale, mirrored in the use of feminine symbols throughout. In Lady Macbeth’s first speeches she merges murder and
birth, two opposites, to show her inconformity to women’s
stereotypes. However, later in the play Lady Macbeth puts on
a feminine mask to hide herself from the murders committed.
Using feminine stereotypes, Lady Macbeth shields herself from
her fears, contradicting her previous defiance. Shakespeare adds
to the conflict within Lady Macbeth’s character by showing
motherhood in a political setting. He personifies Scotland as
a defeated mother, mirroring the emotional struggle of Lady
Macbeth. Though Shakespeare establishes feminist themes early on in Macbeth, by the end, women are portrayed as innocent
and motherly.
At the beginning of the play Lady Macbeth’s defiance contradicts maternal stereotypes. She directly contrasts feminine
sexuality with gory symbols in order to show her divergence,
yet also raises the question if a woman can be strong without
being compared to a man. She says, “unsex me here.” The
word “unsex” connotes that it is impossible for her to achieve
as a woman. She must be “unsexed,” changed physically, in
order to justify her defiance and confidence. Similarly, she
says, “come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall”
(1.5.47-48). Here the symbol of milk occurs, evoking images
of birth and life, while “gall” presents the bitterness associated
with Lady Macbeth’s masculine personality and her need to
be “unsexed” in order to fit in. The juxtaposition of milk and
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51
“gall” is constant throughout this scene, as Lady Macbeth places
images of death next to those of life. In describing her plan to
kill Duncan, she says she would “have pluck’d my nipple from his
boneless gums, and dash’d the brains out” (1.7.54-55). Both her
attitude and her use of violent imagery enforce the idea that she
does not conform to woman’s standards, but rather assumes the
assertive, male role. Despite her apparent rejection of feminine
characteristics, Macbeth remains fixed on her femininity, saying
she should “bring forth men-children only; for thy undaunted
mettle should compose nothing but males” (1.7.73-74). Here,
though he acknowledges her defiant personality, Macbeth cannot
see his wife as his equal, for he immediately asserts that she
should “compose” only boys as children. Although Lady Macbeth
attempts to set herself apart, she is always anchored by her sexuality, restricted by a world of extremes.
However, as the play progresses Lady Macbeth becomes
vulnerable as she is forced to hide behind stereotypes for protection. This first manifests itself in her fits of sleepwalking. Lady
Macbeth is incapable of monitoring her own actions, causing her
to reveal secret information. As a gentlewoman observes, “it is
an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands”
(5.1.32-34). Lady Macbeth’s washing of her hands also shows that
she feels exposed and vulnerable due to the murders she has committed. She is trying to rid herself of blood and death, the gory
details she seemed so attracted to at the beginning of the play. In
both senses, Lady Macbeth is contradicting her original characterization as a manly woman. Furthermore she masks herself with female stereotypes in order to evade her fear of the blood. She says
that “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”
(5.1.57-58) from the stench of blood that lingers. The childlike
quality of a “little hand” connotes daintiness and innocence, and
“perfume” connotes yet another feminine product, both of which
further depict her reversion to female characteristics. Moreover,
the temporary quality of perfume shows that Lady Macbeth can
only mask, not fix her problems. Thematically, Lady Macbeth is
submitting to this world of gender extremes, letting go of any
male qualities in order to once again appear ladylike.
By the end of the play, the formerly feminist themes that
Shakespeare develops fall apart on a political level, shown in
52 Fieldston Upper School
Malcolm and Macduff ’s conversation about the fall of Scotland.
Macduff states the “country sinks beneath the yoke; It weeps, it
bleeds; and each new day a gash is added to her wounds” (4.3.3941). Scotland is personified with the pronoun “her,” and the
image of Scotland’s loss of power mirrors Lady Macbeth’s newfound weakness. Further, the physical bleeding or “gash[es]”of
Scotland emulate the pain of Lady Macbeth’s psychological struggle. Mixing feminine images and death-similar to those in Act
One, this scene presents women as innocent and motherly instead
of defiant. As Malcolm states, Scotland will not “be call’d our
mother, but our grave; where nothing, but who knows nothing,
is once seen to smile” (4.3.162-164). Again, a direct personification of Scotland as a mother, who sees the death of Scotland’s
warriors as the death of her own children. Scotland is presented
as ignorant of this death and therefore “smiles” in the face of
tragedy. This happiness despite grave times presents the idea that
women are childishly ignorant of real problems they can’t handle.
This bias against women has roots in the priorities of this period.
Ross, a minor noble in the narrative says that “good men’s lives
expire before the flowers in their caps” (4.3.173-174), honoring
the valiant soldiers that died in battle by implying that while the
men may have died, their hopes, or “flowers,” did not. Men’s role
in society at this time is to fight and gain honor and pride, leaving
women immobile in their helpless and ignorant role. Therefore, it
was this flawed society that assumes women are ignorant to death
and war that lead Lady Macbeth to lose her defiant feminine fire
when she felt vulnerable.
Overall, Shakespeare ends on an ambiguous note, leaving the
implications of the text open for discussion. Malcolm says that
Lady Macbeth died “by self and violent hands” (5.8.70). Taking
her own life presents a scene of defiance and confidence in her
final moments. It puts control of her own life and death back in
Lady Macbeth’s “violent hands,” a description that also mirrors
Lady Macbeth’s personality from the beginning of the play. She
is driven by a desire to gain power and control over herself, not
by fear. However, this line was said by a witness and not Lady
Macbeth herself, lessening her suicide’s power and importance. In
fact, in every feminist instance in the play there is also a reminder
of women’s inferiority to men. Even in her original personality
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53
she must be “unsexed” before Lady Macbeth can murder. She has
finally removed her mask of femininity, but a manly woman will
never be accepted, politically or emotionally. This notion is still
debated today and Lady Macbeth can be seen as an image against
these imposed gender stereotypes. Gender roles assumed men’s
place as valiant warriors and women’s place as helpless bystander,
stereotypes contested in our society. Beside their origin, these
stereotypes led Lady Macbeth to “unsex” her identity, assuming
a manly role and ending in her demise by her own hands. Feeling
misplaced in society due to imposed norms is still an issue today,
and these stereotypes’ harmful consequences must be recognized.
Only when awareness of this problem is universal can our outdated society be changed.
54 Fieldston Upper School
Katherine Serwer
Form VI
Fiction
Eliza Ornell is Weird
Anybody can become angry- that is easy,
but to be angry with the right person to
the right degree and at the right time
and for the right purpose, and in the
right way- that is not within everybody’s
power and is not easy. - Aristotle.
I
n the middle of a wheat field, in the center of a small
town in Boise Valley, lives Eliza Ornell. Her house,
bleached from the sun, sat lopsided, dissolving into dust
coating the stalks of the wheat. Anyone living within a mile of
the Ornell house develops the most wretched cough, since the air
is thick and smothering. In the last five years, Eliza’s cough has
aggressively developed. From this stemmed her disgusting foible.
Every couple minutes or so, Eliza coughs, emits a low harsh
growl, then spits. Often, Eliza stands on her side of the road and
tries to spit across it. She’s made a game of this. She could do it
with her eyes closed, because the sound of spit on compacted
dust differs from the sound of spit on loose gravel. Hitting the
gravel would get her 5 points, but making it to the dust on the
other side meant 10 points. Every morning waiting for the school
bus she tries to beat her record of 65 points. At least she thinks it
was 65 points, but she had kind of lost track that day and wants to
give herself the benefit of the doubt; after all, this is only a game
she plays with herself.
This morning while waiting for the bus, she did not play. Eliza became particularly distracted by a rodent, presumably a possum, lying motionless in the dust on the other side of the road.
She was not sure if it was alive, but she was not squeamish about
death, and this was not what bothered her. Eliza was bothered by
the fact this possum had the audacity to lie down, dead or alive, in
front of her bus stop, therefore ruining her game. The possum’s
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presence discomforts her so much, she could not hear the cicadas,
whose constant buzzing was so loud it usually gave her a headache. Eliza stared so ferociously she almost seemed to drill two
tiny holes in the side of the animal, but soon this isn’t enough.
Eliza picked up a rock that sat next to her sneaker. She closed
one eye and threw the rock at the possum. It bounced twice and
landed at least a foot short of it, right next to a dead locust.
Eliza picked up another smaller rock, closed one eye, and
hurled the rock at the locust, crushing it. It crunched; it had been
dead a long time. She felt absolutely giddy. This was her revenge
on the locust. They had ruined nearly half the wheat crop last
year. Her family still suffered the consequences. Instead of the
usual thick cut ham, fresh eggs and bread, she had eaten cream
of wheat for breakfast nearly every morning for the last three
months. Eliza longed for her old routine. First, cut off a piece of
ham from the slab; second, put a piece of egg white on top, and
drag these through the salt and pepper on the corner of her plate.
She saved the bread and yolk of the egg for last. This was her
favorite part.
Eliza walked back and forth on the side of the road. The
possum continued to stare at her. She decided to change her
approach. Instead of using a lighter rock and relying on her arm
to hit the possum hard, she chose a larger, heavier rock to let
gravity do the trick. She searched for the sharpest, heaviest rock
she could find. Once spotted, she picked it up and returned to
her original spot. Eliza bent her knees and tossed the rock as high
up as she could. She watched it slowly ascend, and with greater
speed, descend.
Every time she failed to hit the possum, it seemed to grow.
By her 10th try, the possum—
Just then, Eliza heard a faint engine growing in her left ear.
She looked to see the yellow school bus, through distorting heat
waves, chugging towards her. She had to act quickly. Eliza looked
left and right before crossing the road, which became a habit after
nearly losing some toes twice; the second time wasn’t her fault
because the driver was speeding. Eliza ran to join the possum on
the other side. She wanted to kick it but couldn’t stomach it. What
if it got blood on her shoe? She kept her distance. The bus was
56 Fieldston Upper School
closer. She instinctively looked for a stick on the side of the road,
only to remember that there weren’t any trees around for miles.
Instead, Eliza decided that a stalk of wheat, though significantly
more malleable, would suffice. She had to finish with the possum
before the bus arrived so it wouldn’t leave without her. It was
50 yards away. Eliza poked the possum; it didn’t move. 30 yards.
Eliza poked the possum; it didn’t move. 20 yards. Eliza poked the
possum; it didn’t move. 15 yards. Eliza made one last jab into the
side of the possum. 10 yards. The possum jolted up, but it wasn’t
a possum at all. It was a small house cat. The cat looked up at
Eliza and turned to cross the road. 5 yards. The cat ran across the
road. Eliza lunged to grab the cat, only startling it more. The bus
didn’t stop for Eliza and ran over the cat. It made the most terrible noise, like a crunch-squish, which made every hair on Eliza’s
body stand on end. The cat’s blood splattered across Eliza’s shoes
and stained her socks. Eliza heard the engine grow fainter in her
left ear. Her mouth tasted of spoiled meat and rotten eggs.
Eliza missed the bus.
Inklings 2016
57
George McNulty
Form V
Essay
W
Haarlem
e all need a place that feeds our soul. For me that
place was St. Paul’s Church. St. Paul’s started as a
house church drawing Christians of all ages and a
mix of cultures from lower and upper Manhattan who shared not
only a faith but an appreciation for music, pop culture, and the joy
of sharing a meal, praying and worshipping together. I attended
St. Paul’s for most of my childhood. It was a place where I didn’t
have to be self-conscious about my faith, like I was at Fieldston.
It was a place where I felt completely free to be myself. While my
family tended to my character and my school tended to my mind,
St. Paul’s tended to my soul. When the church had to suddenly
close because it was too expensive to maintain a small church
with rising Manhattan real estate prices, a part of me died. Five
years later, I still miss it. Now the block where I used to go every
Sunday has a new high-rise and a gelato shop. The new church
my family goes to isn’t far away, but it is bigger, less intimate, and
full of strangers. The sermons aren’t bad, but they don’t have the
same pop-culture references that made Pastor RJ’s sermons so
relatable. St. Paul’s is gone, and it can’t be replaced.
For many black New Yorkers, Harlem is their St. Paul’s.
Harlem is the soul of black American culture, history, and activism. For 100 years, it has offered black Americans a community
of like-minded people and a place where they felt they could be
themselves. Harlem was a place where black people were the majority, where they didn’t feel like they had to represent their race
in a sea of white faces or conform to white European customs.
It was a place where they could celebrate their heritage through
music, art, and dance, and a place where activists could meet and
organize to improve the conditions for black Americans. Like St.
Paul’s was for me, Harlem was a place that felt safe, and that felt
like home.
58 Fieldston Upper School
In the last fifteen years as urban living has become popular
across America, Harlem has become hip. At first, that was good
for the long-time residents of Harlem. There are now more amenities, such as pharmacies, restaurants, and markets selling fresh
produce. There are more policemen on patrol and less crime.
And homeowners have experienced a bit of the American dream
as the Harlem real estate market skyrocketed. Harlem, like any
other piece of land, is for the highest bidder. Since the real estate
market does not discriminate, it was just a matter of time before
the economy pushed upper and middle-class white folks to Harlem to live in this cultural hot bed on a hill filled with light and
pre-war architecture in Upper Manhattan. Harlem became more
white, wealthier, and more expensive. Just like what happened to
St. Paul’s Church, the historical black community of Harlem is
increasingly getting priced out. I wonder if those who can afford
to stay feel the same way I do in my new church: homesick for
their old community and the way things used to be.
Interestingly, Harlem was initially a neighborhood made up
of upper and middle-class white residents. Its cultural identity
as a home to black America didn’t emerge until the early 20th
century. Beginning in 1904, thousands of black Americans
moved to Harlem and over time churches and predominantly
black organizations took root there.1 In the late 1920s, the Harlem
Renaissance started. The Harlem Renaissance can be attributed
to the Great Migration of black Americans from the rural south
to urban cities. Although there were many communities of black
people all over America celebrating their culture, the largest concentration of well-known black writers, thinkers, and artists were
in Harlem.2 Harlem became the place to be because it was seen
as the center of the “New Negro Movement,” which celebrat-
1
Knowles, Elizabeth. “Harlem.” Encyclopedia.com. HighBeam
Research, 2008. Web. 06 May 2016.
2
Hutchinson, George. “Harlem Renaissance.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, Web. 06 May 2016.
Inklings 2016
59
ed a renewed sense of racial pride.3 The neighborhood formed
around this identity of black power and pride, and through that
lost any signs of its old white demographic. It became the home
of the Apollo Theatre, the Black Panthers, Duke Ellington, Billie
Holliday, Marcus Garvey, and Langston Hughes. Harlem became
the voice for black culture and black hope. As Langston Hughes
wrote:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
At twenty-two, my age.
But I guess I’m what I feel and see and Hear,
Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me-we two- you, me, talk on this page.4
Over the past fifteen years Harlem’s demographic has
changed dramatically due to white gentrification. The 1990 census
stated that there were 672 white people living in Central Harlem
and by 2008, there were 13,800.5 Gentrification usually happens
because real estate prices are rising and people are looking for
more affordable housing in an area that is relatively convenient to
work, schools, shopping, and transportation. Areas like this often
have buildings that are considered “fixer-uppers” and are often
seen as having great investment potential.6 The median home value in Central Harlem, north of 125th street, has increased more
than 600% since 2009.7 At the end of the day, gentrification is the
product of a capitalist society, and while some consider this bad,
it seems inevitable.
Contemporary Harlem looks dramatically different than it did
during the Harlem Renaissance. White people and a new demographic of upper-middle-class black people are everywhere now,
and with them come luxury apartment buildings, expensive restau-
3
Library of Congress Staff. “NAACP: A Century in the Fight for
Freedom: The New Negro Movement.” The New Negro Movement. Library Of
Congress, Web. 06 May 2016.
4 Hughes, Langston. Theme For English B. 1951. Print.
5
Roberts, Sam. “No Longer Majority Black, Harlem Is in Transition.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 2010. Web. 06 May 2016.
6
Goode, Linda, and Laura Poitras. “Flag Wars.” PBS. PBS, Web. 06
May 2016.
7
“New York City Gentrification Maps and Data.” New York City
Gentrification Maps and Data. Governing, Web. 06 May 2016.
60 Fieldston Upper School
rants like Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster restaurant, chains
like Starbucks, Whole Foods, and other overpriced businesses
targeted toward the wealthier residents, both black and white.
While zoning laws ensure that there will always be public housing
in Harlem, which allows for a mix of classes, if gentrification
continues to occur at its current rate, it won’t be long before the
majority of its residents are in the upper and middle classes. Once
this happens, the remnants of the old culture of Harlem that developed through the hardships of its residents will have become
one more thing to entertain the wealthy—in upscale restaurants
that tout soul food and the newly renovated Apollo where ticket
prices are more expensive than ever. It won’t be long before
the history and traditions of Harlem are either lost or altered to
appease the new inhabitants.
While the consequences of gentrification, good and bad, are
being felt in many American cities today as the economy grows
and urban populations expand, in Harlem there is an additional
cost that comes with its changing demographic profile. Harlem
is more than a physical space. Harlem is a black utopia, a monument to the strength, perseverance, creativity, faith, and community that black Americans nurtured through generations of
slavery, discrimination, and social injustice. No museum, book, or
song will ever be able to teach future Americans as much about
black American culture and history as the experience of walking
through the streets of Harlem, hearing the gospel music blast
from churches every Sunday, eating soul food at Sylvia’s or a local
grill, dancing in your seat at the Apollo Theater, peeking into
beauty salons and barber shops, and wondering about the folks
on the corner with pagers and brown bags.
Although I describe gentrification as an ugly thing, a part of
me wants to just ignore it. My mother has been dying to get away
from the Upper West Side since I was a kid and move to a more
multicultural neighborhood like Harlem. Recently some of her
friends have moved up to Harlem and have raved about the diversity and sense of community they feel. I, too, would love a more
diverse and friendly neighborhood than the Upper West Side. Yet
I wonder if what is good for me and my family would be good
for Harlem. Maybe one more white family in Harlem won’t make
a difference, but I’m not sure it’s worth the risk.
Inklings 2016
61
Process Over Product
Grayson Cullen
Form IV
Critical Essay
Maturity, Manhood, and Moral Progress in
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn
M
ark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is often referred to
as a bildungsroman with a bitter end: a comingof-age novel where a young boy, Huck Finn, asks
the right questions but fails to arrive at the right answers. Despite
teetering on the edge of the oh-so-relevant Emersonian outlook,
Huck somehow manages to remain a bystander in a problematic
time period, even when he is put in a position to make choices
that will truly display his moral progress at the end of the novel.
Does this mean that Huck never made moral progress? That after
all that time on the Mississippi River with Jim, he never matured?
Huck is a quintessential example of a boy too young to completely comprehend the underlying implications of his own big moral
questions. Huck lacks the mental capability to articulate his moral
conclusions coherently and concisely due to his age. To ask a
young kid to not only make critical moral conclusions on intricate
moral propositions but also act on them, against society, is asking
for more maturity than Huck can provide. Only a true Emersonian “man” could do this. This is not to say that Huck does not
make moral progress. By asking the right questions, he is able to
move in the right direction, but questioning does not guarantee
arrival. While Huck makes significant moral progress, his inability
to mature fast enough to articulate this progress hinders his ability
to fully realize it, draw conclusions from it, and most importantly,
act on it, resulting in a disappointing ending.
But what is the difference between moral progress, manhood,
and maturity? In defining moral progress and maturity, it helps to
turn to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s conception of a man. Foremost,
maturing is the process of becoming a man, thereby entering
62 Fieldston Upper School
what Emerson would call manhood. In Self-Reliance, Emerson
claims that “whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”
This is not to say man cannot agree with society, but that he
must think for himself regardless of society. This principle allows
for someone to be immature but still make moral progress,
like Huck. If one lacks the ability to act as a “nonconformist,”
but still considers alternative views, and questions one’s moral
principles, the one in question, although immature and not a
man, is still undergoing moral development. Unlike most of
the characters in his world, Huck considers alternative morals
because he is put in a direct position where he must. Most
“men” never are.
Huck demonstrates how one can make significant moral
progress without arriving at maturity. This is why the ending
of the book seems so strikingly disappointing. Moral progress,
according to Emerson’s view, means not aligning one’s views
with that of a specified time period; rather, making moral
progress requires questioning one’s values rather than accepting
the values of others. While moral progress can lead to a moral
understanding that speaks for itself regardless of external pressures, the point is the process of questioning, not simply the
arrival at that understanding. Progress is not a linear path with
a singular, predefined conclusion.
When Huck first encounters Jim in the beginning of the
novel, Huck is thrown into an internal conflict where he must
decide between two moral compasses: society’s and his own.
Huck had previously decided to reject other conformities of
everyday, civilized life. He has had little education and detests
Widow Douglas’s efforts to “sivilize” him. Note how Huck
misspells ‘civilized,’, an ironic testament to his intense desire
to resist conformity. On the very first page of the novel, he
even purposefully chooses to get “into [his] old rags, and [his]
sugar-hogshead again” when he thinks of how “dismal regular
and decent the widow was in her ways.” The central conflict in
Huckleberry Finn is not Huck’s desire to become free, because
he already considers himself to be free. What Huck grapples
with is not a sudden infringement of his freedom, but rather
the discovery that his ethical sensibility has always been limited.
Huck has always understood himself to be morally unconven-
Inklings 2016
63
tional—like he believes his friend Tom is—until he faces a true
moral conundrum.
When Huck befriends Jim and promises to keep Jim’s secrets,
he is faced with an internal dilemma. As much as Huck strives to
resist civilized conformity, his very conscience is still contained
in a conventional moral system, one that he struggles to escape.
Even when Huck is physically separated from civilized life and
rides a raft, he still cannot hear his own moral voice. This worry
is one Emerson knew all too well. “The voices which we hear in
solitude,” he writes, “but grow faint and inaudible as we enter the
world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood
of every one of its members.” Huck’s mind was plagued with
voices of controversy. This is best observed when Jim reminds
Huck that he promised to keep Jim’s slave status secret. Huck
reassures him, saying, “Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick
to it. Honest injun I will. People would call me a low down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no
difference.” As conflicted as Huck feels, he keeps his word. But it
eats him up.
Another way Huck makes moral progress is by deliberately
questioning the necessity of lying. Huck lied frequently without problems before his life with Jim and the con man, another
testament to his resistance of civilized culture, which operates on
a certain degree of honesty. But when the con men start playing
with Huck’s conscience, Huck questions the necessity of lying.
The duke, one of the con men, recognizes Huck’s dilemma: “Set
down, my boy, I wouldn’t strain myself, if it was you. I reckon you
ain’t used to lying, it don’t seem to come handy; what you want is
practice. You do it pretty awkward.” One of the reasons Huck has
become awkward at lying is that he has always done it in the spur
of the moment. He has never considered all of its implications.
This is best observed when Huck plays a trick on Jim in the fog,
by abandoning him for fifteen minutes on the Mississippi River.
Jim becomes frantic with worry. When Huck reemerges, Jim
questions Huck immediately: “Huck—Huck Finn, you look me
in de eye; look me in de eye. Hadn’t you ben gone away?” Huck
is surprised by how upset Jim is, and Jim’s emotion causes Huck
to question himself: “It was fifteen minutes before I could work
myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger—but I had done
it… I didn’t do him any more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done
64 Fieldston Upper School
one if I’d knowed it would make him feel that way.” Not only
does Huck consider the power of lying, but he does it in response
to Jim, whom society has deemed insignificant.
An important touchstone on Huck’s journey to becoming
an Emersonian man does not come at the end of the book in the
form of some dramatic action. It comes in the form of a dramatic consideration, when Huck is torn between sending a letter to
Ms. Watson about Jim’s whereabouts or tearing up the letter. The
remarkable aspect of this scene is not Huck’s decision to tear up
the letter, signifying a rejection of social conformity: but rather
that Huck sought to consider both arguments. He stopped to consider. For himself. Am I stealing Jim? Is Jim my friend? He is torn:
“It was a close place. I took it up and held it in my hand. I was
trembling because I’d go to decide forever betwixt two things, I
studied for a minute, sort of holding my breath…” An instinctive
desire to tear up the letter without the chaos of critical thought
would have been comparatively easy. But the mere fact that
Huck trembles in a plague of considerations signifies his moral
progress. Huck sees Jim as a full person and fights the notion that
stealing is always bad: Huck thinks for himself. Even if he chose
to send Jim back, this still would have been progress: the voices in
his head are audible, causing him to tremble.
American storytellers center their narratives on particular
moments of triumph: the turning point, the critical action, the
final decision. Yet, in a novel that plays with themes of morality and progress in the way that Huckleberry Finn does, looking
for such moments would be a distraction from the underlying
meaning. Moral progress is not about the product or the central,
critical, triumphant action. It’s about the process of considering.
Huck experiences moral progress by fully acknowledging the
truths on all sides of the issue, regardless of social pressure. If he
at thirteen is not yet an Emersonian “man”—able to definitively
decide and act on his ruminations—he still makes moral progress.
The reason our immediate reaction to the end of the novel tends
to be bitter is because we mistake Huck’s level of moral progress
with that of a fully mature adult, one whose thoughts always align
with one’s actions. In addition, it seems, we also have a tendency
to confuse moral progress with an adherence to a contemporary,
civilized moral system. Huck has not arrived; he is in the process
of becoming.
Inklings 2016
65
Isabella Pillay
Form V
Fiction
Notation & Obstructions
After reading Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
N
otation:
At about two in the afternoon, a young lady strolls
through the produce section of the grocery store. It’s
not crowded. The speakers play Today’s Top 50 Hits throughout
the aisles of the store. She picks up vegetables and fruits, putting
them into her red shopping cart. I bump into her at the pineapples and she gives me a sideways glare. The store is not crowded;
I should not be in her personal space. She moves along with the
ideal pineapple.
Not but thirty minutes later, she and I stand in the only open
checkout line. She takes candy from the shelf and puts it on the
conveyor belt. The man at register asks “Cash or credit?” and then
“Paper or plastic?”
1) Police Report:
Time: January 22nd, 2016, 2:18 pm
Location: Stop & Shop, 5716 Broadway
Number: (718) 548-3344
Called In: 2:53 pm
Incident: Physical assault on a young Jane Doe by a young Mary
Sue in front of the pineapple selection of the produce section.
There was an encounter 30 minutes later at 2:48 pm involving
implied judgment of one Mary Sue onto Jane Doe because of
Ms. Doe’s purchase of candy along with a multitude of fruits and
vegetables.
Eye Witness: Mark Stew, Checkout Man for Lane 4 of the Stop &
Shop
66 Fieldston Upper School
2) Passive Past:
It was about 2 in the afternoon. The store was not busy, and
the produce section was being strolled through by a lady, who
was young. Today’s Top 50’s Hits was played over the speakers in
the store. The vegetables and fruits were being picked up by her.
The shopping cart was being filled by them. She was bumped into
by me by the pineapple section, and I was given a sideways glare
that was unpleasant. Her personal space had been intruded upon.
The perfect pineapple was selected by her as the fruit section was
walked away from.
It was 30 minutes later and the checkout line was made up of
her and me. Candy was placed by her onto the conveyor belt and
she was asked two questions by the man at the register.
4) Reported Speech:
Mark, the Checkout Man for Register 4 at the local Stop &
Shop, reported a small disturbance in the store. This occurred at
2 in the afternoon, an unsurprisingly slow time of the day. There
was a young woman in the produce section, and he reports that
she seemed to be buying a large amount of vegetables and fruits,
as her shopping cart was full of them. The disturbance, so he
says, happened when another woman walked into the store and
bumped into the former by the pineapples. Mark reports that the
former glared at the latter in such a way that the latter was unable
to obtain the perfect pineapple.
30 minutes later, states Mark, both women were at his register, though he could not sense any lasting tension as he asked the
former how she would be paying and what type of baggage she
would like.
5) Facebook Post: Jane Doe—feeling embarrassed (add emoji)
January 19, 2016
I was at the grocery store today getting vegetables and fruits
for my meal plan. It was so empty, which is why I like to go at 2
Inklings 2016
67
in the afternoon on weekdays. And cause it was so empty, I don’t
know how some other lady could bump into me! In revenge, I
took the pineapple she was going for, haha! But karma is a real
thing, and she saw me break and get a whole bunch of candy at
the register. Oops ☹
6) Periodic Sentences:
Because it was 2 in the afternoon and she noticed it wasn’t
very busy, a young woman walked through the store. As she
strolled through the produce aisle, due to her particular personality she picked up fruits and vegetables with a frown on her face.
The music, because it was Today’s Top 50 Hits, changed daily as it
played over the loudspeakers. Another young woman walked into
the store and, because she had to get fruits and vegetables, walked
into the produce section as well. The two women, though there
was plenty of space in the store, bumped into each other by the
pineapples while reaching for the same one. While standing on
the checkout line, since there was only one register open, they met
again.
7) Twitter:
Jane Doe @janeheartsfruit
Was @ store 2day 2 get food 4 my diet. Lady bumped into me
w/o saying sorry then judged me l8r 4 also buying candy #rude
#geturlife2gether
8) No Letter “A”:
2 hours post-noon, the grocery store is empty of people
except for two young women with some checkout men. They
both buy fruit plus some veggies in the produce section. The first
bumps into the second in front of the exotic fruit. She glowers
when the second one goes to get the one she is going for. The
first picks the best spiked yellow fruit, strolls off with successful
strides. In the subsequent 30 minutes, the two young women
stopped at the checkout line to buy their food. There is still the
sense of hostility between them.
68 Fieldston Upper School
9) Abusive:
IT WAS 2 AND THE STORE WAS EMPTY AND COLD,
LIKE THE HEART OF THE FISH-LIKE LADY WHO
WALKED IN JUST BEHIND ME. APPROACHING THE
SURELY WILTING AND OVERPRICED EXCUSES THE
STORE CALLED PINEAPPLES, THE SICKLY LOOKING
LADY SLAMMED INTO ME LIKE SHE WAS READY TO
GO THREE ROUNDS IN A SUMO-WRESTLING RING. I
HURLED HER THE STINK EYE, AND HER BEADY EYES
FIRED BACK AT ME AS I GRABBED THE PINEAPPLE
SHE WAS REACHING FOR OUT OF HER GRASP.
30 TORTUOUS MINUTES LATER, AFTER BEING
UNABLE TO LOCATE THE TOFU IN THIS FAILED
RENDITION OF A GROCERY STORE, I STOOD AT THE
CHECKOUT LINE, AND THAT HAGGARDLY LADY
WAS BEHIND ME, SEEMINGLY READY FOR ROUND 2.
WHEN IT WAS FINALLY MY TURN, I HURLED CANDY
ONTO THE CONVEYOR BELT. THE CASHIER REGARDED ME WITH DISDAIN AND I MEMORIZED HIS NAME,
READY TO REPORT HIS HOSTILE NATURE ON MY WAY
OUT.
10) Monosyllabic:
It was past noon, I would say 2. I was at Stop & Shop to
buy fruits and health food. There was a young miss there, quite
a sight. She picked health food well. I did not mean to bump her
when we both stood in front of the fruits with spiked brown
fruits that looked like the bright sun when cut up. She glared at
me; I did not know what to say. She took the fruit I had eyed first.
Just half past 2, we met once more on the line to pay. She
picked up a small bag of sweets and placed them on the belt. She
glared at me once more while she plucked her choice of pay from
her bag.
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69
11) Complex Sentences:
It was two in the afternoon, though the store wasn’t very
busy. A young woman walked through the produce section as
she picked up fruits and vegetables. There was music, which was
played over the speakers while everyone shopped. Another young
woman walked into the store because she, too, had to get fruits
and vegetables and pick up beverages. The two women bumped
into each other by the pineapples while they both reached for the
same one. The former woman won and glared at the latter while
she walked away. They met again 30 minutes later while they stood
on the checkout line that was the only one open.
12) Inanimate Object:
I lie here. The room is not quite hot, not quite cold, but
being pressed up against the flesh of my kind does not make me
feel any better. I have been sitting here for a long, long, long time,
listening to Today’s Top 50 Hits for the past seven days. The songs
never change. Today, however, I notice the store is not crowded.
That is, from my point of view. Then suddenly a shadow is cast
across my face, and I flinch in its skin.
A beautiful young woman picks me, and as I am carried away,
I overhear someone else muttering under her breath about me
being “perfect”; I blush. I have never seen this side of the store
before, and I am excited to ride down the conveyor belt and start
my new journey. 70 Fieldston Upper School
Isabel Astrachan
Form V
Memoir
Shit Happens
W
hen we moved into our newly renovated house on
the Upper West Side a few years ago, most people
gave us flowers, biscuits, bottles of wine, or kitchen appliances, the clichéd housewarming gifts one expects. One
woman, however, felt her sentiments toward our family and the
completion of our renovation would be best expressed through
something more unforgettable.
The first time I stepped in dogshit, I was six years old. I was
walking to school down Mallord Street in Chelsea, London. It
covered my small black shoes. All of the shining I’d done that
morning was now in vain. I cried with frustration, being mortified
at having to walk into the school and put my foot in the sink, at
the idea of having to scrub it off my shoe. Elizabeth Oon’s mum,
Jacinta, tried to reassure me. “In some cultures, it’s considered a
sign of good luck,” she said. I didn’t feel lucky. I felt as though
someone had it out for me. I was being punished for something,
but I didn’t know what it was.
When I stepped in shit again four years later, on the stoop
of our newly renovated house, I had the same feeling. At first, we
assumed our small pup had left it for us, christening the house
in his own special way. We hosed down the steps and thought
nothing more of it. And then it happened again. And again, at
times when we were certain Pilot was accounted for. Where was
it coming from? What sin had we committed that warranted God
leaving dog crap on our stoop? Or, did some puppy with a disrespectful owner just like squatting there? Either way, it piqued our
curiosity and started to really piss us off.
Conveniently, the former residents of our home had left a
functioning video camera in front of the house. My dad had no
difficulty slipping into the role of private investigator, winding
through hours of tape with eyes peeled for the perpetrator (or
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pup-etrator). Finally, he found the footage. A round woman with
short curly wisps of reddish-brown hair and a spine that bent like
the top of a coat hanger leaned over to pick up the excrement of
her two dachshunds.
She surveyed the scene carefully, her bespectacled eyes
darting about to ensure that no one could see her, and dumped
the contents of the black plastic bag onto our stoop. Despite the
poor quality of the video, she was easily identified. We’d seen her
walk into the large apartment building on the opposite side of the
street on countless occasions.
It was around this time that we found out about a covert,
militant organization. Its members called it, in an attempt to be
subtle, “The Group Against the Renovation at XXX West 80th
Street.”
Supposedly they met at one point or another to organize a
petition to stop our renovation. While, in actuality, they were only
appealing to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (the façade
of our house—which we weren’t even renovating—is pretty old),
I have always imagined something far more sinister. In my mind,
they were assembling a small army of dachshunds, feeding them
and then waiting for the inevitable, filling little black plastic bags,
preparing for the moment to strike. I imagined that the round
woman was the ringleader. In retrospect, my version of what went
on at these meetings may be slightly overdramatized. But behind
these seemingly harmless childlike imaginings lurks a darker truth.
At ten years old, I found the overt hate of my neighbors amusing
and commonplace. Now I realize that although only one of them
took it so far as to dump shit on our stoop, all of them shat all
over us.
One fateful Tuesday, after Mum had the pleasure of stepping
in some fresh shit, we decided to confront The Poopslinger, as
we now endearingly called her, once and for all. Mum and Dad
did some research, dug up her name, email address, and digits.
First, a letter was mailed. Mum wrote it. I’m not sure what exactly
it said, but I think it was something along the lines of, “Hi, I’m
Jackie Clements from XXX West 80th Street. We have a video
surveillance camera on the front of our house, and it has come
to our attention that you have been leaving dog excrement on our
72 Fieldston Upper School
stoop. We’d appreciate knowing what it is that we have done to
offend you.” I wonder how that went over with The Poopslinger.
We never received a response, so we sent the same message via
email.
Nothing.
It was necessary to employ a different tactic. Mum dialed her
home phone.
“Hi, I’m Jackie Clements. I live at XXX West 80th Street.”
“What?! I don’t live at XXX West 80th Street.”
Her tone was one of absolute disgust at the mere suggestion.
“No. I do.”
And then The Poopslinger chucked the phone at the wall
(or so it sounded to Mum), yanking the cord from the socket and
disconnecting the call.
So we called 311 to ask for advice, as our family friends
hadn’t been of much use on the topic. You’d think at least some
people would’ve experienced shit like this before.
“Oh, you can get her in jail for that! It’s vandalism. I would
wait. If you call the cops right before a holiday weekend, you can
get her in there for four whole days!”
When MLK day arrived, however, we felt that arresting her
didn’t suit the spirit of the holiday. A strongly worded threat
would suffice.
“This is Jackie Clements and Greg Astrachan from XXX
West 80th Street. We have recently been made aware of the fact
that your recent actions constitute vandalism, and we can, and
will, have you arrested if you leave dog excrement on our stoop
again.”
With The Poopslinger incapacitated, the Group Against
the Renovation at XXX West 80th Street resigned in defeat. The
Landmarks Commission never deigned to respond to their petition, but I’ve always dreamt that the fall of their fearless leader
did them in. Either way, we continued our renovation with no
interruptions. Upon its completion, the Group dissolved. You
can still find its members around, though, complaining about
people who put their recycling out too early or shovel the snow
on their section of the sidewalk too late. Two years ago, another
family began a renovation on our street, and the real leader of the
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73
Group (who, to my dismay, was a graying, middle-aged man with
minimal interest in dogshit) knocked on our door. He asked if we
wanted to join him in the Group Against the Renovation at YYY
West 80th Street. I don’t suppose he remembered that he had
once rallied block members against us. We shut our door.
Once again, the Commission ignored his request. From this
I inferred that it receive many such petitions, from disgruntled
neighbors across the city. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if other
poopslingers signed these documents. Maybe the victims of their
surprise attacks did call the police, maybe even over a holiday
weekend. Or maybe they thought a few hateful letters were
enough. For a long time, we felt confident that we did the right thing,
the magnanimous thing. I realize now that we did not. We allowed
ourselves to be swept into a hateful frenzy. Threats of arrest? We
may as well have left dogshit on her stoop.
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Alec Fleischer
Form VI
Assembly Speech
Fossil Fuel Investments
Are not Progressive,
Ethical, or Smart
F
ieldston has a secret two-faced addiction to fossil
fuels. On one side, the school has failed to implement
cost-effective solutions to conserve energy, resulting
in the direct consumption of approximately one million dollars
worth of fossil fuels annually. The other and less obvious side of
our addiction is buried deep within our endowment.
Currently, the school has an endowment of over ninety-two
million dollars comprised of donations. This endowment is used
to run the school by paying for faculty benefits, financial aid, and
other significant expenditures. In the endowment, an undisclosed
amount is invested in fossil fuel companies.
There is the obvious moral argument to divesting—selling
all investments—from fossil fuel companies. By investing in these
companies, we make money every time fossil fuel corporations
cut corners to maximize profits for its shareholders. For example,
BP caused the world’s largest oil spill by failing to implement basic safety measures in order to maximize profit to impress shareholders, such as Fieldston. Is it ethical to profit from a company
responsible for mass scale environmental destruction?
What separates fossil fuel divestment from other similar
divestment movements is the strong monetary argument for fossil
fuel divestiture. With the historic climate agreement in Paris in
2015, global governments, including the US and China, agreed to
limit the earth’s warming by two degrees Celsius. Two degrees of
warming is not ideal: it means huge chunks of low-lying countries
such as Bangladesh will be wiped off the map due to sea level
rise, places like California will experience even worse drought, and
Hurricane Sandy is only a glimpse of the extreme weather events
of the future. Stopping global warming before two degrees is
critical, for after we pass the two-degree threshold, runaway and
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75
unstoppable climate change will commence. At this point, almost
all the ice will melt, opening a positive feedback loop. This is the
doomsday scenario where we see the new shoreline of Manhattan in Central Park. The International Governmental Panel on
Climate Change, a UN scientific body consisting of thousands of
climate scientists, states if we pass two degrees, we will face six
degrees Celsius of warming, even if we stop burning fossil fuels.
But there is hope. This same body of scientists states that to stop
climate change before two degrees, we must keep eighty percent
of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. In scientific terms, of
the 2,795 gigatons of carbon oil companies already own, only 565
gigatons can be burned.
Thankfully, last year in Paris, world governments agreed
to follow the IPCC’s suggestion and have pledged to burn only
twenty percent of known reserves. We can already see the effects
of climate regulation on some companies, all of which we are or
were most likely invested in. Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, has gone bankrupt. The second largest coal
company, Arch Coal, has gone bankrupt. The former CEO of
the fourth largest coal company, Massey Energy, is now in jail for
failing to implement mine safety standards that led to the death of
fifty-three miners. Oil stocks, such as those of BP, are also experiencing massive losses. One of the various reasons these companies are failing to meet profit projections is that their current
evaluation is contingent on their burning all known reserves.
Actually, they continue to spend half a trillion dollars each
year looking for more fossils.
Since oil, gas, and coal companies will have to leave eighty
percent of their reserves in the ground, they own twenty trillion
dollars worth of fossil fuels, know exactly where to dig, have the
technology to dig, but won’t be able to dig. Twenty trillion dollars
worth of stranded assets—comprised of the eighty percent of
fossil fuels world governments agreed cannot be burned—means
the entire industry is massively overvalued. If our endowment
falters from hemorrhaging fossil fuel investments, vital programs
from financial aid to faculty benefits would have to face austerity
measures.
Fieldston would not be a leader in responsible investing by
divesting its endowment. In just the few years of this movement’s
76 Fieldston Upper School
existence, $3.4 trillion in assets have already been divested from
500+ institutions. Some examples of institutions that have divested are Syracuse, the entire University of California school system,
the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, and even the Rockefeller
Foundation—the founders of Exxon Mobil.
Fieldston now faces the ultimate litmus test. Will the school
follow the 77% of teachers and students supporting a full divestment, or will it defy the members of the community, putting its
endowment in increased financial risk while compromising its
morals? Every day Fieldston remains invested in fossil fuel companies, the farther the school strays from Felix Adler’s mission
of “developing individuals who are competent to change their
environment in greater conformity with moral ideals” through a
“model of progressive education.” For the health of our planet,
the stability of our teachers’ pensions, and the honor of this institution, divest from dirty fossil fuels and invest in the future.
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Cary Moore
Form III
Critical Essay
What Blindness Illuminates
Oedipus as Tragic Hero
O
ne can have difficulty viewing Oedipus, a man
ultimately portrayed as extremely pitiful, as a heroic
figure. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero must
have strengths that make him great but also weaknesses that make
him mortal. The tragic hero freely makes choices that result in a
reversal of fortune and doom. In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles initially
depicts Oedipus as a capable leader, but one doomed by the gods
to kill his father and marry his mother. Once Oedipus realizes his
true identity, and discovers the prophecy did indeed come true, he
purposefully destroys himself. Consequently, Oedipus is a great
tragic hero, as his strong intellect makes him superior to all other
humans, yet knowledge eventually leads to his downfall.
Oedipus gains power and the admiration of his subjects by
displaying tremendous wisdom. A priest tells him, “You freed us
from the Sphinx...we taught you nothing, no extra knowledge, still
you triumphed” (161, lines 44-47), expressing that Oedipus revived Thebes by using his superior brainpower. Clearly, Oedipus’s
subjects value his intelligence greatly, as it allows him to defeat the
Sphinx. Furthermore, this power over immortals enables common people to control their own lives and truly obtain free will.
The priest goes on to say, “Oedipus, king, we bend to you...find
us strength, rescue!” (161, lines 50-51), thus honoring Oedipus,
“the man of experience” (161, line 55). Oedipus’s ability to gather
information and wisdom from his past experiences and give
thoughtful advice make him nearly divine, as the priest, a well-respected religious figure, chooses to pray to Oedipus instead of to
a god for the liberation of Thebes. The people of Thebes admire
Oedipus’s wisdom almost as much as they do the power of the
gods, and as Oedipus had previously improved their lives using
his intellect, they believe he deserves their reverence.
78 Fieldston Upper School
While Oedipus’s subjects initially consider him to be
extremely shrewd and so worship him as if he were immortal, the gods withhold even more information than Oedipus possesses, making them even wiser. Despite Oedipus’s
prestige in the mortal world, he nonetheless remains inferior
to the gods. As the priest venerates Oedipus, he acknowledges that while “we do rate you first of men” (161, line
41), “you cannot equal the gods” (161, line 39). Regardless
of Oedipus’s superiority and heroism among mortals, he
cannot compete with immortality and infinite knowledge,
and so the public moves on to worship “Apollo, the lord of
light” (170, line 231). Apollo illuminates ignorance, making
him the appropriate god to worship during times of bewilderment. Oedipus himself admits his inferiority, stating that
“to force the gods to act against their will—no man has that
power” (174, lines 318-319). Oedipus explains that humans
cannot control the gods, meaning that only immortals, not
humans, have unconditional free will. Although Oedipus had
previously defeated the Sphinx using his wisdom to obtain
knowledge only gods possessed, he still falls short. Though
gods often have power over the actions of mortals in this
play, perhaps when enlightened with knowledge, humans
can escape the gods’ immortal grasp and make independent
decisions as well.
Although the gods dictate Oedipus’s fate to murder his
father and marry his mother, once aware of his true identity,
Oedipus takes control of his destiny. Acknowledging the
fulfillment of his oracle, Oedipus physically blinds himself
in spite of his internal illumination. “Apollo…he ordained
my agonies—these, my pains on pains! But the hand that
struck my eyes was mine—mine alone—no one else—I did
it all myself!” cries Oedipus as he stabs his eyes (241, lines
1467-1471). Unquestionably, his life is fully destroyed when
Oedipus blinds himself. But he finally has control. Oedipus
himself chooses to live in misery and do penance, rather
than ending his no longer fortunate life. At this hugely pivotal point, Oedipus acts completely independently from the
gods, thus freely deciding his own fate at last.
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Oedipus indeed fits all the criteria of Aristotle’s tragic hero,
as gods look down upon him and people look up to him, and,
with his knowledge, he controls his own collapse. Though Oedipus’s enlightenment brings him extreme anguish and strips him
of his power over Thebes, his transition from dim ignorance to
bright awareness grants him a more important power: the power
to choose. Though his self-revelations make him miserable, free
will brings great meaning to Oedipus’s life, as finally, it is his own.
80 Fieldston Upper School
Arianna Ruiz
Form VI
Fiction
Sugary Apples
I
imagine myself bathing in a tub of my own blood; it’s
only slightly diluted by bathwater. I feel exhilarated yet
weirdly tranquil. I close my eyes and listen to the sound
of raindrops dancing on leaves. It’s an app on my cellphone. My
subconscious tells me this is serenity, and a part of me believes
it. The other part of me thinks that I’m crazy. I slowly raise my
head from the bloodbath. The cuts along my body begin to sting,
and the harsh wind escaping through the cracked door makes
my flesh sticky. My dirty locks are conditioned by bloody water.
I am dirty. My insides are being reflected on my outsides, and I
am dirty. There is no escaping this dirt. I begin to claw at my face,
but I don’t weep bloody poetry as I had hoped. Instead, I am left
with fingernails full of gray gunk. Yuck. Someone knocks on the
door, maybe my brother, maybe my mother. “Time’s up!” she says.
“Evening pie is ready.” She doesn’t realize that she is interrupting
my masterpiece. This is art that I am creating with my body. “I
baked you a pie,” she says, not understanding that her casual talk
is surfacing this intellectual den I have so carefully dug. I believe
a slice of my dirty body is more real than a sweet piece of pie,
but my mother disagrees. She believes we have to eat our sweets
in order to keep our insides pink. She believes that sugary apples
touch the soul and turn our anatomy into Valentine’s Day. But I
know something she does not: our insides are red because we are
unholy. And as our evil insides cascade from the body, they transform into dark dirt that can be sanded with the fingertips. I begin
to sand the dark dirt on my shoulders with my fingertips. “Come
slice your pie!” Mama says. Check, I think to myself. “Come eat
your pie,” Mama insists. But that would be cannibalism, according
to her sugary fantasy. Besides, I don’t buy into her fairytale of
sweet souls. Mother is persistent so I exit the bathtub and put on
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my long-sleeved tan t-shirt and nude underwear. My cuts stick to
the fabric of my t-shirt and the blood quickly seeps through. I
walk toward the kitchen table as my tan t-shirt turns into a dark
brown t-shirt. I am getting drowsy but the chair is only a couple
of steps away. I keep walking. Each step toward the kitchen table
is like a step up the ladder in my ditch. Finally I am there, but
where exactly am I? I lower myself onto the chair. It is uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable, but only for a little while longer.
I can feel the dark sand on my butt cheeks rub against the chair.
The pie smells good, and finally it sits before my eyes. I hold a
knife up to it as if to cut out a slice, but before I get the chance
the bright pink muscles in my neck give way. I can taste the sugary
apples and then I cannot.
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Sydney Bergen
Form III
Critical Essay
A Traitor’s Death
The Futility of Life in Macbeth
T
he Thane of Cawdor, a character with no speaking
lines, influences the entire course of Shakespeare’s
Macbeth. His death spurs on the murderous actions of
Macbeth and subsequently Macbeth and others’ deaths. However,
his character holds no physical substance, only appearing after his
own death through the words of others. Whatever accomplishments attained throughout his life are disregarded after his death,
and instead he is branded with the name of a traitor and forgotten. This disregard for the life he lived and the focus on his death
suggest the pointlessness of life. Furthermore, they shine light
on the impact and significance of death in society. This ideology—the insignificance of life and the importance of death—is
reinforced throughout Macbeth.
Life may seem important in the moment, but it proves to
be insubstantial in the grand scheme of things. The Thane of
Cawdor’s life is neglected after his death, summed up in one
word: traitor. The things he accomplished in life are not mentioned. How could his life mean anything if no one seemed to
care? It could not. As Malcolm said, “Nothing in his life became
him like the leaving it. He died as one that has been studied in his
death to throw away the dearest thing he owed as ’twere a careless
trifle” (1.4.8-12). Malcolm is noticing that the Thane of Cawdor’s
life amounted to nothing, thrown away like “a careless trifle.”
Only his death has any impact on the living, for “nothing in his
life” that he did could compare to his “leaving it.” This theme,
introduced with the Thane of Cawdor, continues to reappear
throughout Macbeth.
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The Thane of Cawdor’s death presents the opportunity for
Macbeth to advance in the social hierarchy, setting off his treacherous actions and shedding light on the gravity of the Thane
of Cawdor’s death in the play. When Macbeth and Banquo first
encounter the three witches, the wëird sisters tell Macbeth that
he will become the “Thane of Cawdor” and that “Macbeth that
shalt be king hereafter” (1.3.52-53). With the Thane of Cawdor’s
death, the prophecy is confirmed. In a conversation with Malcolm, Duncan says, “no more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive
our bosom interest. Go, pronounce his present death, and with
his former title greet Macbeth” (1.3.73-76). The syntax of this
quotation, specifically “and with his former title greet Macbeth,”
implies that the Thane of Cawdor’s life amounts to nothing, but
that his death is vital to the play. His life is overlooked; his only
importance lies in his title. After learning of his new status, Macbeth thinks that “two truths are told… this supernatural soliciting
cannot be ill” (1.3.140-144). Macbeth realizes that if one of the
prophecies came true then the other one could, too. This prompts
Macbeth to take matters into his own hands and kill Duncan in
order to fulfill the last part of the prophecy. He is then crowned
King and murders Banquo, hoping to stop Banquo’s sons from
inheriting the throne. Greed overtakes Macbeth, forcing Macduff
and Malcolm to kill him and free Scotland from his tyranny. Lady
Macbeth takes her life because she cannot live with Duncan’s
blood on her hands. So it seems that the events of Macbeth are all
a result of the death of one character—a character mentioned
only in passing.
When Macbeth learns of the death of his wife, he makes a
series of remarks on the unimportance of life. One such remark
was that “she should have died hereafter” (5.5.20). The word
“hereafter” is key. Macbeth negates Lady Macbeth’s accomplishments by arguing that death is inevitable and that life is only waiting for death. He also says that “life’s but a walking shadow...it is
a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
(5.5.28-32). The key clause here is “life’s but a walking shadow.”
This metaphor is an interesting contrast to the typical representation of life as bright and angelic. Instead, Macbeth associates
life with darkness, an association typical of death. By making this
84 Fieldston Upper School
contrast, Macbeth strengthens the idea of the meaninglessness of
life. Macbeth makes it clear that life holds no significance and is
only a precursor to death.
Life passes by in the span of a second, but death’s impact
lingers. Through the course of events in Macbeth, death far surpasses life in its importance, since the effects of death can be felt
for years. For example, Duncan’s murder has grave consequences.
Whatever actions he made as King had little effect on Macbeth, but
the impact of his death was immense. After his death, the issue
of his successor poses an interesting question. The heir, Malcolm,
flees the country making him an impossible choice. So instead the
“sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth” (2.4.41-42). As a direct result
of Duncan’s death Macbeth is crowned King. And as a result of
Macbeth’s rise to power, the country of Scotland suffers under his
tyranny. The roots of the hardships of Scotland lie in Duncan’s
death.
The events in the play Macbeth are like dominoes. The fall of
one domino, in other words the death of one character, knocks
down the other dominoes. The Thane of Cawdor’s execution was
part of what caused Macbeth to murder Duncan, and Duncan’s
death causes Macbeth to become king. However, it should be
noted that a certain ambiguity shrouds the sequence of events in
Macbeth. The Thane of Cawdor’s death was not the sole reason
for Macbeth’s ruthless actions; the reason lies in a mix of factors,
including Lady Macbeth and humanity’s flaw: ambition. But
death’s impact on the play tells us, as Macbeth implies, that life is
just waiting for death. People are players on a stage just waiting
for their cue to leave. What the players say onstage pales in comparison to the effect of their absences. What applies to Macbeth
applies to the lives of everyone; we feel the impact of death for
years.
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Sarah Hirschfield
Form VI
Critical Essay
An Illusion of
Philosophers and Fools
F
or Addie Bundren, in Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying,
a word was “just a shape to fill a lack” (172). For her
family, she was both a lack and a shape to fill one.
Tasked with burying the matriarch, feckless Anse, conscientious
Cash, intellectual Darl, solitary Jewel, abortion-seeking Dewey
Dell, and young Vardaman head towards Jefferson, Mississippi, to
purportedly fulfill Addie’s living and dying wish. Despite the disastrous odyssey, almost all of the characters make the trek. Anse
gets new teeth and a new woman; Dewey Dell and Vardaman get
bananas; Cash gets a graphaphone; Jewel saves his mother’s coffin
and assures it makes it to Jefferson. Darl and Addie aren’t so
lucky: the former has been taken off to a mental asylum and the
latter is dead. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying—exploring the
human condition under flood and fire, under fast falling rain, over
hilltops—provides an answer to the question of existence, meaning, and being. Darl and Addie deal with loss poorly. Firstly, they
perceive it—an absence, a lack—where others don’t. Secondly,
they either leave the perceived loss unfulfilled or supplant it with
detached intellectualism. Although Darl’s and Addie’s understandings of the world are moving and poetic, the cognitive distortions
ultimately lead them astray, as perceived emptiness leads to dehumanization. While the passages themselves, in their rhetorical glory, suggest that their life philosophies are the high points of Darl’s
and Addie’s characters, the content of these egocentric ramblings
reveals them to be the cause of both characters’ downfalls. As
the French poet Max Jacob wrote, “When you get to the point
where you cheat for the sake of beauty, you’re an artist.” Faulkner
has cheated the many critics who are persuaded by fine language.
Under the artistry, however, is nothing but vice.
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Addie’s theory of language turns over on itself; meaningless
words turn into meaningless people. First, readers must understand the experiences that pushed her to reach this philosophy.
Before Addie finds a husband, she looks forward to whipping
her students—“Now you are aware of me!”—to make a mark on
them in order to give her life purpose. “In the early spring it was
the worst,” she says until she meets Anse and has Cash. Then: “I
knew living was terrible…I learned that words are no good; that
words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at” (171). She
feels as though her “aloneness had been violated…[T]he shape of
my body where I used to be a virgin is the shape of a
….It
was not that I could think of myself as no longer unvirgin, because I was three now” (172-173). She comes to understand that
“love” is not love. “Love” is a promise unfulfilled, an emptiness.
Martin Heidegger, who outlined three modes of being in his
influential work Being and Time, explains, “missing is the not-finding of something we have been expecting as needed.” Rebecca
Massey, who traced critics’ interpretations of Addie’s chapter,
writes, “…when Addie insists that the word is ‘just a shape to fill
a lack’ she is identifying it as a form of ‘being-missing’—which is
also to say that every word negates the thing that is named; every
word brings about a loss of (the named thing’s) presence” (Ibid,
21).
Addie’s language clearly supports this interpretation. “[S]in
and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned
nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot
have until they forget the words” (174). She wants “not-Anse,”
as if “not-Anse” were an entity to have. And since she cannot
have “not-Anse,” she lets “him be the shape and echo of his
word” (174). Feeling as though her first two kids are not-hers, she
conflates meaningless words and meaningless people, deciding
that words are “like orphans to whom are pointed out in a crowd
two faces and told, That is your father, your mother,” a simile that
accurately describes her attitude towards parenting, whereby she
dehumanizes her own family (174). She gives cuckold Anse Dewey Dell and Vardaman “to negative Jewel,” whom she had outside
of the marriage, and “to replace the child I had robbed him of ”
(176). Her entire world quickly loses all meaning.
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To use Heidegger’s vocabulary, Addie fails to have world disclosure, to give ontological meaning to things in context. In her
mind, fulfilling the imagined promise of having kids for Anse was
her purpose, albeit an empty one. Then she can “get ready to die”
(176). Her death, in this reader’s rational view, is the end of her.
She is gone, no more, nada más. But in her Weltanschauung of
“dead sounds,” “dark land,” and “voiceless speech,” “there was no
beginning nor ending to anything” (175). Death, to Addie, is yet
another “being-missing,” an empty promise, like everything in life.
To paraphrase the title Dasein herself: because people to whom
life is just a matter of words, to them death is just words too.
Darl turns to cerebral analysis to replace the loss of his
mother. While his siblings find feasible goals to replace this loss,
Darl sinks into thoughts so deep he ultimately isolates himself
and suffers depersonalization-derealization episodes, likely a
result of childhood trauma and Addie’s neglect. Darl’s eyes are a
well-noted phenomena. Cora, a neighbor, remarks that between
Addie, on her death bed, and Darl there is “true love.” “He
just stood and looked at his dying mother, his heart too full for
words,” which, according to Addie, actually is true love (25). Aside
from during this one uniquely heartfelt moment, Darl is perceptive to the point that he makes people feel uncomfortable, even
violated. “He said he knew without the words like he told me that
ma is going to die without words, and I knew he knew because
if he had said he knew with the words I would not have believed
that he had been there and saw us,” says Dewey Dell, whose
pregnancy Darl understands (27). She hates him for that. So when
Darl burns down a barn as a way to terminate everything his
family stands for—that is, false motivations for the journey, “how
our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures
wearily recapitulate: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on
no-strings…furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls” (207)—“it
was Dewey Dell that was on him before even Jewel could get at
him” (237). Cash, who narrates this section, briefly contemplates
the idea of insanity and objectivity but still notes that Darl’s burning the barn down was wrong. Darl also perceives the truth about
Jewel’s father when he finds Addie crying quietly in the dark.
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To analyze the putative validity of or to attempt to romanticize Darl’s statements would be to miss the point. Besides, this
job has already been done. He lies “beneath rain on a strange
roof, thinking of home,” contemplating existential questions
about what is and what was (81). “Yet the wagon is, because when
the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty
myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied
yet, I am is,” he goes on (80-81). Here we witness the beginnings
of a poetic descent into depersonalization-derealization. When
we return to Darl’s narration post-fire, he has gone under, referring to himself in the third person, alluding to seeing sexual intercourse during his childhood: “incest…two faces and no back”
(254). He also loses words, repeating, “yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes” (254). One critic explains that he “laughs because he lacks
words to distinguish what he perceives. Darl laughs because he
lacks words to contain the chaotic world around him. Darl laughs
because he lacks words to express his being. Darl laughs because
he knows no word that affirms as it denies simultaneously, that
destroys as it creates, save the name Addie.” This reader can think
of another name that destroys as it creates: Darl.
Darl is evidently self-destructive. His intellectualism, a coping
mechanism, drives him mad. But at his expense, art is created.
The readers benefit; we can see the truth and lyricism in every
line without having to smell the stench of the rotten corpse. To
paraphrase Cash, this world is not our world; this life our life. Yet
we can learn about it through art. Darl holds the mirror up to
nature. If words are as meaningless as Addie posits them to be,
why write As I Lay Dying? Why read it? The novel forces readers
to consider the value of art as a piece of communication, beauty,
and insanity and to search for our own Addies. After all, there are
plenty of fish in the sea.
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Ariana Reichler
Form III
Fiction
In Wonder-Heaven
After reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
T
he Mock Turtle and Gryphon continued to drag
Alice on for so long that she could hardly remember
why they had even begun running in the first place.
It seemed to her as if they were going downhill, but she couldn’t
be sure with all the twists and turns and ups and downs they had
made. After what felt like an eternity to Alice (although not nearly
as long as her fall down the rabbit hole), the Gryphon stopped
short in his tracks and let go of Alice’s hand, sending her tumbling forward, right into two huge, bronze doors. Startled, Alice
jumped to her feet and looked to the Gryphon, expecting some
sort of an apology. But neither the Gryphon nor the Mock Turtle
had even noticed her fall; their attention was entirely consumed by
the doors. “How peculiar,” thought Alice. “They live in a world like this
and are astonished by a mere door.”
When Alice turned around, she realized why the Gryphon
and Mock Turtle were so captivated. The doors stretched as
far she could see on either side and seemed to extend into the
heavens. Their panels flaunted intricate engravings and imprints,
among which Alice noticed a mythical creature she had learned
about in school.
“Is it a mink?” she muttered to herself, “Or was it called a
lynx?” She didn’t know the proper name, so she dared not share her
rather exciting (or so she thought) finding with her companions,
who she feared would mock her forgetfulness.
All of a sudden, Alice felt the ground begin to shake, and she
realized the doors were slowly inching apart, leaving just enough
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space for her to pass through. She stepped inside and turned
around to see if the Gryphon and Mock Turtle had followed her
but could only manage a glimpse of the Gryphon’s dropped jaw
before the doors slammed shut with a loud bang and a giant cloud
of dust. When the dust had finally settled and the echo stopped,
Alice looked for the first time at what lay in front of her.
Alice felt as if she had stepped into a secret jungle overflowing with life. There was an abundance of plants and animals
of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. Monkeys swung from
tree to tree, birds chirped as they flew all around, and the largest
lizards Alice had ever seen crept about the ground. Although she
was surrounded with so much life, what caught Alice’s attention
was that everything was mirrored. What she saw on her right she
saw in exact replication on her left. If there was a red tree on her
right, there was sure to be one in the same spot on her left. If
a chipmunk hopped across a branch to her left, another did the
same on her right. Intrigued, Alice picked up an acorn lying next
to her left shoe. To her surprise, the acorn that lay on her other
side sprang up off the ground and floated up to her hand. She
hurled the first acorn as far as she could and squealed in delight as
the second followed. Wishing to continue her fascinating experiment, Alice ran to pick the plump mushroom she had spied out
of the corner of her eye. But as soon as her fingers closed around
the cap, it flipped back and exposed a very angry-looking face.
“Excuse me!” said the mushroom man, “Exactly what do you
think you are doing?”
Not recovered from the great shock, Alice stammered for
words. “I–I–I’m s-s-s-sorry, I–”
“You should be! What nerve—disturbing a sleeping man like
that! Now, why would you do such a thing?”
Alice desperately tried to explain what had happened but
was unable to produce the words. Fortunately, another mushroom-capped man came to her rescue. He ran (or rather waddled)
as fast as his stubby legs could carry him to the first mushroom
and whispered in his ear: “It’s her!”
Clearly shocked by this news, the first exclaimed, “Her her?”
“Yes, her!” the second responded.
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“Who’s her?” Alice asked, quite confused by the whole
situation.
“You’re her!” both mushrooms shouted in unison.
Not understanding what was going on any more than before,
Alice asked, “ If I am her, who are you?”
“I am Fun-Guy 1,” the first mushroom man said, “And my
brother is Fun-Guy 2.”
Fun-Guy 2 waved. “We are the most fun guys in all of Wonderland!”
Nodding in agreement, Fun-Guy 1 said, “We’ve been waiting
for you. Follow us!” And without giving Alice a chance to ask
how they knew her or where they were going, they swiftly turned
around and began tottering away.
Because each of her steps covered the same distance as three
or four of theirs, Alice found herself taking one step at a time,
waiting for Fun-Guy 1 and Fun-Guy 2 to make enough space for
her, and then taking another. It was an incredibly tedious process,
and Alice feared she would not be able to continue much longer. Thankfully, they soon stopped at a clearing in the forest with
two adjacent gateways in the center. They were not doors— as
there were no doorframes or doorknobs—but Alice could tell
they led somewhere. Settling on calling them portals, Alice peered
inside and was blinded by the glowing nothingness that occupied
the opening. Perplexed, Alice looked to Fun-Guy 1 and Fun-Guy
2 for an explanation. Fun-Guy 2 cleared his throat, paused, and began to theatrically recite a memorized verse:
“We have led you to the door;
From us, you can ask no more.
It is now up to you to choose;
This game, I hope, you will not lose.
One door leads to a land of love;
Cats, tea, cake—all of the above.
The other one means certain doom;
In there lies your resting tomb.”
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At this, Fun-Guy 1 interrupted, crying out, “Oh, I do hate
this part! It is so not fun!” Indeed, it did not sound fun at all
to Alice, who had no clue how she was to choose between the
identical portals.
“How do I know which to choose?” she asked.
“You see, dear, you already do know. You have made it here,
so you can make it there as well. Just think about your journey,”
answered Fun-Guy 2. This offered Alice no assistance, as she still
could see no difference between the two portals.
Suddenly, in the corner of her eye, she saw the White Rabbit
dart into the first door. Without a second thought, Alice jumped
in after him and found herself floating on top of a cloud. It was
soft to the touch and reminded Alice of being wrapped in a blanket with a cup of tea and biscuits, a familiar sensation that felt
oddly comforting as she rode a cloud to an unknown destination.
Alice soon drifted off into a light sleep. When she woke up,
she saw the White Rabbit hop off his cloud and scurry down
the mountain they were passing by. She quickly stood up and
leaped onto the mountain behind the rabbit, but soon realized
she had already lost sight of him. Disappointed, Alice sat down,
unsure of what to do next. She was beginning to worry that she
had somehow made a mistake when, out of nowhere, Dinah, her
cat, and a platter piled with tea and cakes of every kind appeared
in her lap. Then the clouds parted in front of her and revealed
Wonderland in its entirety from a bird’s-eye view: the forest, the
Duchess’ house, the croquet ground, the garden of red roses, and
all the other peculiar places Alice had visited.
Now everything made sense to her. She finally understood the riddles, the new acquaintances, the
doors, and the fact that the trial the Gryphon spoke of was her
own. She knew she had not chosen the wrong path but had instead
found her final resting tomb inside the land of love, filled with
both doom and joy. With this realization, Alice welcomed her
new life up above her old world and said goodbye to her happy
days, which she would dearly miss and remember forever.
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****
Alice’s sister closed her book with a triumphant flourish of
someone who had just spent a good deal of a Sunday afternoon
reading a no-picture-or-conversation-book. Ready to recite an
exciting summary of its contents, she turned to the tree against
which she had last seen her sister leaning. However, instead of
Alice, she saw only a small spot of flattened grass. Assuming her
little, short attention-spanned sister had become bored and gone
inside for a cup of tea, she began making her way back home.
Not even halfway there, she noticed something strange; there
seemed to be a large hole in the middle of the yard. As curiosity ran in the family, she changed her route and headed in the
direction of the hole. When she reached its edge, Alice’s sister
peered inside and caught sight of what at first appeared to be an
unmoving, lifeless, white animal of some sort, perhaps a rabbit.
However, upon closer inspection, she realized its white fur was
not in fact fur but a young girl’s church dress, and that its head
was covered in golden locks, and that from either side of the
dress poked two small little legs, still wearing those frilly, white
socks and shiny, black shoes she recognized all too well. Without
ever looking away from the leather, she dropped her book, fell to
her knees, hit the earth, and screamed her sister’s name.
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Kaya West-Uzoigwe
Form V
Poem
Vessels
I
S
kin is soft
But can effortlessly be diverged
delicate to touch but easily serrated.
Veiled with veins,
Memories captivate the cells
Layer upon layer,
after peeling everything away,
the skeletal remnants still hold all truth.
II
After all these years,
you remained callous,
and unyielding like teeth.
Never decaying,
the stories still there,
Stuck between the vertebrae.
III
You were like stained glass.
Astonishing.
Each transient piece of glass,
displaying each one of your dispositions.
It emanates light,
just the opposite of your hung pupils.
IV
Behind each curved shard,
I observe my reflection.
You can read my countenance.
Engrossed in the thought of losing you,
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you remind me,
so I feel it in my bones.
V
The stories,
Beaten into my spine like yours.
Lying between tendons,
Knit into the tissue.
Strapping and secure,
hereafter.
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Joelle Windmiller
Form IV
Critical Essay
Deconstructing
Daisy Buchanan
C
haracterized predominantly by her unrivaled beauty
and alluring voice, Daisy Buchanan is depicted behind
a gilded facade throughout Fitzgerald’s novel, The
Great Gatsby. In her thinly coated, gold exterior, she portrays an
angelic figure that provokes immense desire and jealousy. Yet her
appearance and seemingly frivolous values mask her complex
nature and inquisitive insights into the world that confines her.
The repercussions of the shifting gender roles throughout
the 1920s are palpable in Fitzgerald’s novel. Women had just
started voting, working, wearing pants, and cutting their hair
short. The magnitude that these seemingly insignificant affairs
held shows the profoundly ingrained sexist sentiments of that
time. Nearly all of the men in this novel display their adherence
to these views by repeatedly abusing women and asserting their
dominance over them. Nick reveals his conviction when he
recounts the guests at Gatsby’s party and divulges, “Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite the
same ones in physical person, but they were so identical one with
another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before”
(63). In this account, Nick unveils the expendable nature of women. This passage objectifies them as conforming items, all yielding
to the rigid roles of their distinguished gender. The identities of
these women are all blurred together in Nick’s eyes because the
singular expectations for girls in that era were so meticulous that
they resulted in the production of virtually identical women.
Daisy Buchanan faultlessly embodies all of the idealized
expectations of women at the time. Everything from the confidence she exudes, to her flawless mannerisms and figure, exemplifies the perfect Southern belle. Throughout the novel, Daisy
seems to have a hold on everyone who knows her—both men
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and women—seemingly without exception. Nick Carraway, the
narrator, writes: “Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky,
rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had
never had before and would never have again. When the melody
rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm
human magic upon the air” (113). Daisy’s control resembles that
of the mythical Sirens. Through similar descriptions, Fitzgerald
characterizes Daisy as pure, virtuous, elegant, and charming; however, the connotations that accompany her identity as a woman
define her as seductive, selfish, superficial, and shallow. Yet these
negative undertones are, to some extent, encouraged in women.
Nick asserts, “Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame
deeply” (61), showing that it was believed that women were not
competent enough to hold intelligent, meritorious values.
Despite her ditzy and materialistic reputation, Daisy is
conceivably the most intuitive person in the novel. Daisy is able
to recognize the repute of women and plays this stature to her advantage. In particular, Daisy memorably tells the story of the birth
of her child: “She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head
away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope
she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a
beautiful little fool” (17). Astutely, Daisy pinpoints what everyone
else fails to recognize. She is able to comprehend exactly which
aspects of women are valued and manipulates those around her
into acquiescing to her every whim, as they ignorantly idolize her.
Gatsby is particularly enraptured by her indescribable demeanor. Nick reveals, “[Gatsby] hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy,
and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the
measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes,
too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though
in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer
real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs” (95). Daisy
possesses the intelligence and perceptiveness to come to terms
with her worth in the eyes of society and recognizes the inequities
around her, despite the fact that they remain unacknowledged. As
a consequence of her intuitiveness, Daisy is able to wrap those
she meets around her little finger: “[Daisy and Tom] moved with a
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fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out
with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn’t
drink. It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking
people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time
any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so
blind that they don’t see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for
amour at all —and yet there’s something in that voice of hers...”
(80). Reading through the novel with Daisy’s forethought in mind,
readers can see that she is not ignorant, foolish, and delicate.
Daisy Buchanan is underratedly observant, resourceful, and
ambitious.
Although Daisy is painstakingly aware of injustices women
endure at the time of this novel, she does not insist on change
but plays into her expected responsibilities. In this way, Daisy
does live a superficial life of irony and fakeness, where she
realizes a woman’s true worth but decides to portray herself as
“worthless.” Thus, although readers may ultimately deem Daisy
Buchanan intelligent, she cannot be characterized as brave, as she
is incapable of attempting to alter the social constructs surrounding gender.
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Sarah Najjar
Form VI
Fiction
Najjar and I
After Jorge Luis Borges
I
walk through the hallways in school, silently, while she
smiles thoughtfully, greeting peers. Everyone loves her.
It’s her demeanor, her gracious words, and her interest
in everyone else’s life. I won’t lie, I wish people cared about me in
such a way, but I’m too cold, too shy, too different. Teachers find
her respectful, siblings look up to her, friends cherish time with
her, parents are proud of her. We both love those sweet banana
smoothies from Hamid’s store and wish to return to our deceased
grandmother’s home, but she reminisces over these things in a
mesmerizing, oblivious manner: sipping her smoothie happily,
making small talk about her wonderful childhood to the person
next to her, while I sit there, yearning to go back, every limb in my
body burning, unable to speak. People skills belong to her. Everything admirable belongs to her. Slowly, I find myself embodying
Najjar. We both hate horror movies. But she hates them because
they give her nightmares, disrupting her sleep cycle, while I cannot
bear them because they remind me of my fear of inadequacy and
of my failure to overcome it, time and time again. Nevertheless
we both choose a different movie. Najjar lives her beautifully simple life, and I live through her. I’ve begun to find myself adopting
her graceful mannerisms and her lovable characteristics until I
encompass all that she is, my very existence dissipating into the
darkness it was born from. I can no longer tell which one of us is
writing this page.
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Aukai Elkaslasy
Form IV
Critical Essay
Jay Gatsby:
A True Debonair Man
A
uthenticity, or the trait of hailing from an undisputed origin through traditional means, is often
the baseline term used to value Gatsby’s virtue and
fidelity toward his so-called friends. Thus, Gatsby’s authenticity
is questioned, as Gatz recreated himself to bring into being an
untraditional (by his standards, at the age of seventeen) and daring better-self. Does Gatsby’s seemingly divine creation disqualify
him from being authentic? Perhaps, by definition, but Gatsby
is by no means a “boorish fraud,” as Tony McAdams describes
him in his essay “The Great Gatsby as a Business Ethics Inquiry.”1
Although McAdams is right in saying that a reason for admiring
Gatsby is his commitment to his new self and goal, Gatsby’s
actions suggest that the reinvented Gatz is a virtuous and genuine
character. Although McAdams suggests that Gatsby is a fraud,
his thesis is flawed when Gatsby’s actions are analyzed through
different angles of a diverse set of philosophical means. Fitzgerald’s great Gatsby is an untraditional take on a Roaring 20s new
money character, but when seen through the lens of Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, Gatsby is nonetheless genuine to those who
know him well and virtuous to those he cares for.
While McAdams is justified in suggesting that Gatsby is
inauthentic, he is wrong in calling Gatsby’s adult life a lie. By
10
McAdams’s essay was published in Journal of Business Ethics,
Vol. 12, No. 8 (Aug., 1993), pp. 653-660. This essay’s question, “Was Gatsby a
boorish fraud or a true debonair man?” was based on a quotation from McAdams’s work.
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definition, Gatsby is unauthentic. Many of his acquaintances don’t
know the truth behind his origin, and he never tells the public
the whole story, leaving his conception to debate (we do however
see him tell his close friends about his past, as he did when Nick
and Daisy were curious about the photo of Tulomee, Dan Cody’s
yacht). But this does not disqualify as inauthentic all of the actions
he has taken as an adult. Jay Gatsby is simply a “plutonic conception of himself ” (Chapter IV), a way to motivate a new him to
move past the poverty he struggled through in adolescence. One
wouldn’t disqualify all the actions of a single person because he
changed his name, would one? When Gatsby rows out to Dan
Cody, a new chapter in his life begins, one where the world is his
for the taking. Every action that follows is no less real than his
previous life.
In his analysis of Jay Gatsby, McAdams discredits all of
Gatsby’s actions by calling his life a lie. Yet Gatsby suffers from
the ramifications of his adventures and exploits. Gatsby often has
nightmares, or can be seen “trembling” (Chapter One) while deep
in thought: “It is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in
the wake of his dreams” (Chapter One) that proved the righteousness of Gatsby’s actions. If it can be inferred that Gatsby
suffered from PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, due to a
tour during the Great War, then it is undeniable that this truth
disproves McAdams’s claim. And even more so, any actions that
can be claimed to be insincere because Gatsby has an underlying
motive—a motive relevant to Gatsby’s chasing a memory—are
in no way less real or honest than any other man’s dreams and
actions.
In McAdams’s response to The Great Gatsby, he uses Nick to
discredit Jay—but there is an error with this assessment of Nick’s
stance. The first is that Nick is a third party, brought into the storyline to mediate between Daisy and Gatsby. Due to the time and
place of Nick’s arrival, Gatsby slowly opens up to him, telling him
bits and pieces of the truth throughout the story. Nick, in turn,
tells the reader parts of the truth as well, ultimately writing about
it two years later. It is because of this that Fitzgerald suggests
that Nick never really disapproved of Gatsby. McAdams quotes
Nick in scenes that come before Gatsby’s death, and before Nick’s
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stance becomes clear. If Nick truly disapproved of Gatsby it is
doubtful that he would have honored Gatsby by seeing to the funeral arrangements and writing a book dedicated to his old friend
and his story. After all, Nick reflects on how Gatsby inspired him
to “run faster, and stretch out [his] arms farther” (Chapter IX), in
other words, instill an ambition like no other.
A key to understanding the truth behind Gatsby’s righteousness lies in examining the close relationships Gatsby fosters. To
understand these relationships, it is helpful to use Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as it applies to friendships. Aristotle describes three
types of friendships: virtue, utility, and pleasure. In a friendship
of virtue, one draws satisfaction from seeing one’s friend succeed
or find pleasure. In a friendship of utility, the two friends are
beneficiaries of one another. This is often exhibited in business
relationships. The third is a friendship of pleasure, where the two
are drawn to each other based on pleasantries or wit, similar to
that of Gatsby and his partygoers. These friendships often break
up when one can no longer offer the trait or object that makes the
friendship desirable, the type of friendship evident when none of
the guests comes to Gatsby’s funeral.
A major and central friendship in the text is that of Nick and
Gatsby—a friendship that is virtuous. Although Nick’s kinship
with Daisy is a clear motive for Gatsby’s kindness, Gatsby is very
hesitant and shy to ask for any favors. Furthermore, Gatsby tries
to repay Nick by offering him a job. Even though these exchanges
of awkward favors can be confused for a friendship of a utilitarian nature, the way in which Nick sticks around for the funeral and
does his best to honor Gatsby’s legacy suggests his relationship
was very real and virtuous. And should the original, utilitarian
nature of the friendship outweigh the virtue, then it can at least be
stated that the relationship developed into a genuine one. Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship ultimately does not work out;
but while it does it is most virtuous. Everything Gatsby does is
for Daisy, from the house fixtures to the parties. Seeing her happy
makes him happy, demonstrating virtue. And while it is possible
that Gatsby had an alternative motive, as he tries to recreate the
past, it is undeniable that Daisy brings him pleasure. It can be
argued that this is simply Gatsby fulfilling a selfish desire, and
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thus this relationship is not virtuous. But Aristotle writes that selflove is “an entirely proper emotion provided that it is expressed
in the love of virtue” (Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8). Thus, even
with another motive besides true love, Gatsby remains virtuous.
Another point that suggests Gatsby and Daisy do not have a virtuous relationship could be that Daisy doesn’t really love Gatsby.
This would imply that Daisy’s motive for entertaining an affair is
to get back at Tom, or simply for the thrill. Aristotle addresses
this irony, stating that if one loves one’s friend who has one’s
best interests in mind, then one loves oneself, thus maintaining
virtue. So even if she is not entirely virtuous toward Gatsby, Daisy
fulfilled his desire, in turn having him satisfy her for a time, so
the relationship is, in Aristotelian terms, ultimately virtuous. That
being said, many relationships reach an end; and so even if theirs
does when Daisy chooses Tom, this end does not disqualify their
relationship from being virtuous while it lasts.
In contrast to Gatsby’s virtuous relationships, Gatsby has
a few utilitarian friendships with his business associates, such as
Wolfsheim. When Gatsby dies, Wolfsheim stays out of the drama.
He mentions how he not only found Gatsby but also “made him”
(Chapter IX) into the businessman he became. Now that this
partnership is no longer possible, Wolfsheim backs out of the
responsibilities of the friendship, a typical trait of a friendship
of utility. Nonetheless, this friendship is by no means a lie. Close
friends of Gatsby know about it, and although not virtuous, it is
still a friendship.
Daisy has her voice, Gatsby his smile: “It was one of those
rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you
may come across four or five times in life” (Chapter III). Gatsby’s
smile tells all, explains all. McAdams mentions the scene where
Nick says he “disapproved of him [Gatsby] from beginning to
end” (Chapter VIII), shorty after telling Gatsby that “they’re a
rotten crowd,” referring to the party-goers, and that Gatsby was
“worth the whole damn bunch put together” (Chapter VIII). At
this, Gatsby nods, and then “broke into that radiant and understanding smile” (Chapter VIII). If Nick truly meant what he
said as an insult, with a tone of denigration, would Gatsby have
smiled? Or, rather, did Nick say it as a witty joke backed by truth,
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and the understanding smile is Gatsby acknowledging his friend’s
wise words? Either way, Nick knows what the smile means.
Gatsby’s smile “understood” him, “believed” in him—it is honest.
Gatsby’s smile shows everything falling into place, everything he
dreamed of slowly coming together: a once reckless and impossible desire that becomes truly real. This happiness is most evident
when Daisy walks through his home, completely absorbed in the
sheer magnitude of its décor, while Gatsby cannot take his eyes
off of her: his dream has been granted. Call it luck, call it divine
intervention, but it is all real, however brief. It is genuine happiness, and by no means a lie. And so although McAdams suggests
that Gatsby is a fraud by using pertinent evidence from the text,
his thesis is flawed. And of all things, “boorish” is certainly an
unfitting adjective for Gatsby, as he is well mannered and charming, and in many senses virtuous, until his demise.
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William Casciato
Form V
Memoir
W
The Mountain
hat do you get when you mix long summers, a
fantasy-story-obsessed kid, and a backyard? An
entire world of imaginative adventure.
I live in the suburbs and have been blessed with a large
backyard: a rocky hill covered in trees and thick bushes. I called
this The Mountain. When I was little I would spend hours at a
time romping through my backyard with my friends. We would
build forts or wander around, lost in our fantasy world that always
included soldiers, monsters, zombies, or whatever else we could
swing our sword-shaped sticks at. My backyard represents some
of my favorite childhood memories, but it has a more important
meaning than that; it is a way of gauging change for, while it has
changed very little, my perception of it has changed as I’ve grown
up. When I was little I never went to sleepaway camp, and
although I did things during the day, I still had too much free time
during the summer. I loved to read books and play video games
about fantasy worlds. There was always some character I wanted
either to be like or to fight against. Maybe I wanted to be a knight,
or archer, or mage, or any kind of fantastic human-like creature.
When I stepped into my backyard, I was whoever I wanted to
be, wherever I wanted to be. Sure, my neighbors could probably
see me, and admittedly, they probably I thought I was insane. But
why should I have cared? At that moment I was the best warrior
in the biggest battle the world had ever seen. With a sword in my
hand and a determined look on my nine-year-old face I marched
around The Mountain in whatever my fantasy land was that day
Imagine this. It’s early August, and you have absolutely
nothing to do. Your parents have told you that you’ve spent too
much time playing video games, and all of your friends are away
on vacation. You step out into the thick humidity of an August
106 Fieldston Upper School
afternoon and start walking around your house. You have too
much pent-up little kid energy, and your mind is reeling, thinking
a thousand different thoughts a second.
As you push through the bushes into the clearing behind
them everything comes into place. You don’t think about who
or what you want to be—you just know. You grab the stick that’s
curved like a bow and start climbing the mountainous terrain.
You get to your vantage point on the rocks and take aim at the
enemy troops below. You let go of the arrow, and it’s a direct
hit. But there’s no time to think about the shot because now the
enemy is closing in. You’ll have to fight! You grab your stick, no,
not your stick, your sword, because now the distinction between
reality and imagination has melded into this great battle. You
fight off the projections of imagination that are more real than
anything else at that moment. As you make your escape into the
trees your mind is furiously racing to think of a story to keep this
scenario alive—so you can keep living in this moment
My backyard is nothing more than a big hill. But it was The
Mountain to me because my perception of it was steeped in my
imagination. It was magical. It was so important to me that it had
to be more than just a hill in a backyard. The Mountain was a
place for me to be peacefully alone—or surrounded by as many
people as I could imagine.
As I got older, I would go to the Mountain to relax and read.
But I could still experience that feeling of being alone yet together with the people in my book, just as I had when acting out my
imagination. When I was reading, being on The Mountain felt like
an extension of the story I was immersed in: The Mountain made
me feel like I had stepped into a place that was all my own. Even
if I wasn’t swinging a stick around while making sounds with my
mouth, I was experiencing an imaginary world that was, to me,
real.
Whenever I suddenly have the urge to try and recreate one
of those magical moments on The Mountain, the biggest shock
to me is how small everything is. The rocks that only my brother
and I knew how to climb—because we were the only ones that
knew the little handholds—are only as tall as I am now. The comfortable alcoves I used to hide in are now cramped. Sometimes it’s
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hard to understand how I spent so much time in a place that I can
run around the entirety of in less than a minute. The worst part
of it is that now I can always feel my neighbors watching me, and
it bothers me. When I walk up The Mountain I don’t feel like I’ve
been transported: instead I’m just sitting on a rock looking like a
complete weirdo to anyone who notices.
In the center of The Mountain there was one particularly
large rock that I called “Sharpie Rock.” Sharpie was my pet dog
at the time, a Shar Pei (a really creative name) that I adored. In
actuality, the rock looked almost nothing at all like a Shar Pei except for a roundish section that vaguely resembled an eye, and, if
you imagined hard enough, the rock seemed covered in wrinkles,
like my Shar Pei’s face. Looking back now, I realize that the rock
looks absolutely nothing like a dog. But that wasn’t the point.
The “Sharpie Rock” was just another part of my backyard that I
perceived through the hyper-imaginative lens of a little kid.
Now it’s different. I can remember what it was like to be
a little kid in my backyard, but I can’t recreate those feelings
because I’m too busy thinking about whether or not the shape of
a rock really emulates the shape of a dog instead of just taking it
in stride and letting my imagination wander.
The Mountain feels like it has changed a lot since I was little
when in actuality it has changed very little. There are probably
some bushes and trees that grew up or died, but for the most
part it’s the same old backyard. I’m the one who’s changed. There
are probably obvious and rational reasons that explain why The
Mountain looks different to me now. Maybe it’s because I don’t
spend time there anymore. Or maybe it is because it appears to be
smaller as I grow bigger. But there are reasons deeper and more
difficult to understand. The Mountain feels different because it
means something different as well. It is the same place, but it used
to feel like a living, breathing world that I could step into. It used
to take the threads of my imagination and spin them into a tapestry. Now it is a husk of what it once was, saturated in melancholy
memories and nostalgia.
108 Fieldston Upper School
Ishaan Rai
Form III
Fiction
Alice’s Adventures
in the Metropolitan Museum
A
lice hated the Met.
It’s so boring,” she complained. “It’s all just dusty
old statues. Can we go back to Toys R Us please?”
The little girl began to tug on her mother’s dress.
“Stop that, Alice!” her mother cried. “You are going to stay
here for the night if you keep acting like this! So be quiet and just
walk. Come now, this place isn’t so bad.”
So Alice, named after her great-great-great-grandmother
Alice (who was the very same girl who saw a white rabbit on a
hot spring day), and her mother began to walk through the halls
of the Met. They trudged through the Greco-Roman gallery, the
armor gallery, and the Modern Art gallery, but Alice didn’t notice
any of this because she still had severe jet lag from her flight from
London. She slowly began to drift off to sleep….
She was awakened by the sound of partridges. Bronze partridges, to be exact. The birds were jumping around her, and one
ended up stepping on her.
“Ooh. That hur-OOF!!”
Alice was cut off by a boy running straight into her, and she
fell back onto the hard floor. She was about to cry because she
was so confused and bruised, but she looked at the boy who had
ran into her and realized he wasn’t a normal boy; he was bronze,
just like the partridges, with large splotches of orange rust all over
his green body.
“Oh, um….uh…. hello!” The boy said nervously. “I did not
see you there… I’m terribly sorry I hope you aren’t hurt Oh you
don’t look too good actually you look rather pret-oh nevermind I
have to catch my pet bird you see it ran away bye!” And he ran off
down the corridor. Alice was so confused that she forgot that she
was going to cry.
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“What a strange boy. If he wasn’t made out of metal he
would’ve looked rather red. Now where in the world am I?” She
looked up and realized she was in the Greco-Roman galleries.
“Oh dear, not this dusty old place again! But where are all the
people? And why does the room look much bigger now? And
why are some of the statues missing? This is all very pecluiar (I
think that’s how you say it). I better find my parents, or, even better,
a way out of this terrible place.” So Alice started to walk around
and noticed how many of the pedestals were devoid of their marble and bronze statues. The ones that did have figures on them
had all their heads missing, however. And some of them were
naked, which made Alice rather uncomfortable. Alice heard a little
noise, almost like a whisper. She heard it again: “Pssss.”
She turned around and saw another gray-green bronze statue,
but this time it was a man wearing a toga. She realized that the
sound was coming from the hole where the head should be. She
climbed on top of the statue—there are no guards here, she thought,
so it’s all right if I do this—and peered down the hole. Suddenly,
a booming “HELLO” came out from the hole, which shocked
Alice so much that she fell off the statue.
“Hello, young lady,” the statue said, starting to walk around.
“I have been waiting for someone to help us, and you appear to
be the person we have been waiting for.”
“Um….help you with what?” Alice whispered, very intimidated
by the seven-foot-tall headless statue talking to her.
“Help us against the Queen, of course!”
“Queen Elizabeth? What has she done?” Alice asked, incredulous.
“No no no. Not that Queen. The Queen of Hearts!”
“Queen of Hearts? I feel like I’ve heard that before,” Alice
said, scrunching up her face, trying very hard to remember.
“Of course, you have heard of her. She’s the most dastardly
queen to have ever lived! She rules this place with an iron fist, and
if there is anyone she doesn’t like, she steals that person’s head
and forces them to stand still like a statue. Like me!! But you’re
an outsider, so maybe you can convince her to stop being such a
Gaul!”
Alice, realizing that the statue was not so intimidating, said,
“Well sir, maybe I can help you, but first you must answer some
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questions.” Alice was always taught that the best way to get to
know people was to ask them about themselves, and the statue
seemed close enough to a person.
“Very well then, what would you like to know?”
“What is your name?”
“Marcus Cariolanus Multitudinus, 57th Consul to the Senatus
Populusque Romanus.”
“Um….wow, that’s….a long name.”
“Well what is your name, young lady?”
“Alice.”
“I would say that’s quite a short name.”
Alice, unaware of the humor, said, “Actually, it’s quite a normal sized name. You see, my parents quite liked the name since
it’s been in my family for a very long time. Alice was actually the
name of my great-grea—
“There’s no time for dillydallying, young lady!” Marcus Cariolanus Multitudinus, 57th Consul to the Senatus Populusque Romanus,
exclaimed, now a bit agitated. “Go and find the Queen! She is in
the Hall of Arms and Armor, right next to the Hall of Music.”
“But….”
“No buts. Leave me in pace now.” Marcus (whose full name
will not be repeated again!) then froze into a statue position and
refused to talk to Alice, even though he could still see and hear
everything.
“Oh, I guess he went back into statue form. I guess I should
go to the Armsmor section or whatever it is. But there’s no one
here. It’s so terribly lonely.”
Alice began walking through the strangely abandoned halls
of what she thought was the Met, but she after a while she began
to doubt herself. The floor stretched out for what seemed like
miles, and the walls and ceilings in the neoclassical style were larger than anything Alice remembered. “The museum is certainly not
this big! This is absolutely ridiculous!!!” she shouted, frustrated
with the endless expanse. But all she heard was her words echoing
back to her. Alice slumped down on the floor and was getting
ready to cry again.
Suddenly, Alice heard music. Beautiful music. It sounded like
an entire symphony was playing. Alice got up and said, “Now,
now, Alice, crying will do you no good,” echoing the words of her
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111
mother, “The statue did say that the Queen would be near a Hall
of Music, and that must be it!” After a few minutes, Alice arrived
at an entryway, and through it was a gigantic orchestra with
instruments of all kinds, laid out on a soft green carpet. “Wow!
These are so amazingly amazing!” Alice exclaimed. Upon looking
at the orchestra a bit closer, she saw that, like most things in this
museum, it was not normal. The instruments were unlike anything
she had seen. There was a five-foot string instrument with a single
string, so it made just one, monotonous sound over and over
again. There was a trumpet with at least twenty tubes twisted in
a seemingly random shape, which was so uneven that two people
had to play it at the same time, blowing into opposite ends of
the tubes. There was even a literal world’s smallest violin, only
a square inch. The players of the instruments were not people,
however. The orchestra had clean-looking bright marble statues in
the front and darker, more worn metal statues in the back.
“So this is where all the statues went,” Alice deduced. “But
one of those statues looks very familiar. It’s the boy that bumped
into me earlier!”
Sure enough, that very same bronze boy who had been chasing down his pet bird (which, unfortunately, had its head chopped
off by the Queen for being “incessantly annoying”) was at the
very back of the orchestra. The boy looked quite miserable as he
was forced to play the world’s smallest violin, and he had a very
hard time using a ten inch-long bow on even tinier strings. The
boy and Alice made eye contact. The boy became very wide-eyed,
and his rusty cheeks actually started to turn a little bit red as Alice
came closer.
“Hi!” she said, not wishing to scare him off again. “Please
don’t run away again, I’m actually a very nice person. My name is
Alice. What’s yours?”
“Um….well….we’re kinda in the middle of a music piece, so
I have to finish it first because the Queen is coming soon and we
need to play music when she comes so….oh no now everyone is
looking at us!”
Sure enough, the entire orchestra had turned around, as the
two of them had been making a lot of noise, embarrassing both
Alice and the boy. One of the marble statues got up and started to
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make his way to where the Alice was, and the metal statues bowed
their heads down and moved out of the way to let the marble one
through. This statue was a very strong, intimidating looking man
with a very imposing helmet. He was also naked. (Do people here
have no shame? Alice thought).
“Just who do you think you are, boy? Trying to talk to a marble statue like that? You will infect her with your rust!” The boy
raised his head even lower in shame and embarrassment. “I’m
very sorry young lad—oh, what’s this?” The marble statue looked
closely at Alice and realized she wasn’t marble at all. Her skin was
unlike anything the helmeted statue had seen before, so now he
was very confused.
“Your skin looks so….soft. What are you?”
“Um….a person.”
“Trying to be wise with me, eh? Well, I’ll take you to the
Queen then!”
Just as the helmeted statue was about to grab Alice, another statue announced: “Make way for the Queen! Make way for
the Queen!” And the card-shaped monarch entered the Hall of
Music, with her retinue of fellow paperbacks following her right
behind. The King of Hearts was absent, having become very sick
from some wine the Queen had bought. (The Queen also put
her secret recipe in that wine, assuring the King that drinking the
wine would give “one of us great power.”)
“WHERE is my orchestra?! Weren’t you hardheads supposed
to be playing for me when I entered? My knights! My samurai!
Where are you? Come here and chop these insolent rebels’ heads
off!”
Suddenly, empty pieces of both European chainmail and
Japanese O-yoroi began to move on top of their pieces of horse
armor. They knelt in front of the Queen and said, “Yes, my
Queen.” You see, the Queen was so fearsome and terrifying that
she was able to make two warrior cultures that completely hate
each other end up working together.
The statues, both marble and metal, pleaded for mercy. Some
of the marble statues grabbed some of the metal statues and said
they would give up the metals so they would be spared, but the
warriors showed no mercy. Their heads were sliced clean off with
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113
katanas and broadswords and paraded around like prized emeralds (statues can still function without heads, so it’s actually only
a minor annoyance to lose them, but an annoyance nonetheless).
Alice, not knowing that some creatures could survive decapitated,
was terrified and slumped down onto the ground, paralyzed with
fear. Then the Queen saw Alice, and a wave of shock hit the
monarch’s face.
“You?! How could you still be alive, after all this time? You,
impudent little girl, embarrassed me in that courtroom so many
years ago. Don’t think you will escape me this time! Warriors, give
me that girl’s head!!”
The warriors were beginning to close in on Alice. The
samurai were going straight for her head and the knights were
looking to smash their heavy weapons into her. Alice had now lost
all hope, and was prepared to accept her fate as mincemeat. Then
she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Come with me, now!” the bronze boy exclaimed, having
gained some confidence. Alice and the boy were able to narrowly
escape a sea urchin’s pointy weapons coming toward them. Some
of the warriors collided into one another, puncturing themselves
with their own weapons. The helmets of the knights and samurai
tumbled off onto the ground, forcing the warriors to suffer the
same annoyance as the statues they had just beheaded.
The two kids were running, with the rest of the Queen’s
humongous army coming after them. Strangely, the museum
suddenly became nearly pitch black as if someone had cut the
light switch, further increasing Alice’s fright. But the two of them
ran into a dead end and were now being cornered by the warriors.
They were stuck.
“In case we don’t make it, my name is Iulius and I think
that….you’re rather….um….pretty.”
“Aw, thank you so much!” Alice exclaimed, “Iulius is a very
nice name!”
Iulius smiled. Now the two of them had all manner of
swords, maces, katanas, battleaxes, and yari pointed at them. Once
again, Alice was ready to accept her fate with Iulius, when there
was a large “BOOM!”
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A gigantic black metal statue in full Spartan armor crashed
right through the wall, knocking over many of the warriors’
horses and the warriors themselves in the process. “Fear not,
young lady, for I am Machina, god of rescue! I save people in
their darkest hours at the most inconvenient time!” And Machina
began twirling around, unleashing a gigantic hurricane-like whirlwind that blew the Queen, her warriors, the statues, Iulius, and
Alice all around the museum. Alice was now suspended in the air
and couldn’t hear or see anything because of the wind; she gave
a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and heard a voice
calling: “Wake up Alice!”
Alice got up with a jolt and found herself facing her mother.
She saw she was back in the Greco-Roman galleries, right in front
of a statue that looked very much like Marcus the Roman Consul.
“Oh dear, Alice, you were in quite a deep sleep. What happened?”
Alice proceeded to tell her mother about her harrowing
adventure, about the strange statue with a very long name, about
the orchestra with the most bizarre instruments, and about the
Queen of Hearts, who somehow recognized Alice from somewhere, and finally, of the sweet boy Iulius.
“Wow, Alice, that’s sounds amazing!” her mother exclaimed.
One could almost hear a pang of jealousy in her tone, as if what
Alice’s imagination had created could never be experienced by
someone as old as she. Even though her mother remained glum
at this realization, she was, at the very least, happy that her daughter had such a wonderful mind.
But then Alice saw, a few feet away, a boy who looked so
similar to Iulius that there was no way he wasn’t. Alice walked up
to the boy, and when the two of them made eye contact, the boy
looked at her in amazement. He recognized Alice as well.
“Hi! I’m Alice. What’s your name?”
“My name is Julian. Have we….met before?”
“I’m not really sure, but do you want to…be friends?” Alice
asked pleadingly.
“That would be awesome! Are you from the U.K? I’ve always
wanted to go to the U.K.! It seems like an awesome place.”
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115
“No, England is rainy and wet. America is so cool, though!
New York is so big and marvelous and wonderful!”
“Well, not really. You can’t deny that this museum is pretty
boring.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking!”
Somehow, through the supernatural power of dreaming,
Alice had made a new, splendid friend, and she would remember
this experience of imagination for the rest of her life, just like her
great-great-great-grandmother.
Alice didn’t hate the Met anymore.
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Sean Zhang
Form III
Fiction
Yoroi
A
ccording to the public, my name is Yoroi. My skin
is crafted with leather, my nonexistent heart pumps
silk blood, and my whole body is bound together
with an iron skeleton. To most, all I am is a suit of armor. A suit
whose purpose has long been fulfilled and now just sits behind a
thick glass wall, staring into its glorious past. I don’t blame them
for thinking this way. Perhaps I should be more active. I could jog
around the Met, maybe say “hi” to my friend Perseus, but then
again, what’s the point? So I spend most of my time chatting with
my buddies beside me. They’re all like me. We all sit like statues,
longing for the days when our empty souls were part of something honorable and glorious. We long for the days when we were
used to gain power and respect, not to gather dust in the corner
of a building. Sometimes I wish that I had simply perished in
battle. I wouldn’t have to be bored to death and unable to die. I
wouldn’t have to spend everyday dreaming, depressed about my
past. Best of all, I wouldn’t have to endure the looks that I get
everyday from people who see me.
The way I see it, there are two types of humans in this modern world. Both of them are terrible. I like to call one of them the
analyzer. They can usually be found in a group: one person talks
to everyone else. Whenever they come to see me, they don’t say
hello, they don’t even talk to me. Those humans just point their
stubby fingers at me and pretend to understand who I am. They
pretend to understand the centuries of pain and suffering but also
joy that I’ve endured. And every one of their statements has to be
justified. Do you have to have a reason to be happy? Do you need
a reason to be sad? Apparently these people do. They try to relate
every trivial point throughout the history of mankind to my very
existence. When I see the analyzers, I want to burst through the
glass and leave them in shock.
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Then there are the photographers. They spend entire days
within the building, but only spend seconds with each of us. All
they need is proof that they’ve been to an institute of intellect to
impress their equally numbskull companions. So they blind me
with a flash from their pocket devices and then just leave. Sometimes they’ll pose, forcing me into uncomfortable positions. And I
can’t do anything about it.
Yet I remember a day when everything changed. A young
man walked into my hall. He looked awestruck, but I didn’t get
my hopes up. Then he strode straight to me and looked me in my
eyes. How rude, I thought, challenging my authority! Then he sat
down, his brilliant hair with vivid colors capping his figure, but
he never looked away. And he never said a single word. Complete
silence enveloped the room, only broken by the pattern of his
breath. Yet it felt like he knew more about me than anyone else.
No matter how detailed the little plaque beneath me was, this man
knew more. No matter how much research one did on me, this
man knew more. And he seemed content with that. So we just sat
together, and he saw the person under Yoroi.
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Hannah Waldman
Form III
Poem
On Self-Consciousness
A
woman with glasses without glasses
looks down at her
feet after thanking another
compliment of
how pretty she is without them. What was she before?
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Index
A
48, 75
Alicia Garza 48
Ella Baker 48
Alice Walker 23
animals 20, 57, 71, 90, 112
apple pie 81
Aristotle 23, 24, 25, 26, 55, 78, 80, 101, 103, 104
Asian America 27
activism
B
81
Beckham, Odell 40
becoming 65
biracial 29
Black hypermasculinity 41
blindness 76, 78
Borges 100
breakfast food 19, 56
bathtub
C
Chaucer 32
childhood 10, 14, 28, 58, 63, 90, 106, 109
class 12, 25, 59, 60
climate change 75
D
78, 81, 83, 86, 90
dogshit 71
death
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E
Ella Baker 48
ethical 29, 63, 75
F
67
29, 43, 46, 48
feminist 29, 32, 34, 51, 52, 53
feral child 18
Fieldston 1, 3, 29, 43, 58, 75, 76, 77
Fitzgerald 97, 101
friendship 64, 103, 115, 118
facebook
feminism
G
32, 36, 40, 43, 48, 51, 63, 97, 119
grammar and syntax exercises 21, 68
grocery store 19, 66
gender
H
Harlem 58
heaven 90
40
10, 71, 106
heteronormativity
homes
I
12, 18, 27, 29, 35, 36, 40, 44, 48, 95, 97, 100,
107, 119
incarceration 8, 16, 30
iphone update 22
identity
J
Japanese
warriors
38, 114, 117
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121
L
Lady Macbeth 54
Lars Von Trier 19
Lewis Carroll 90, 109
M
19
manhood 36, 40, 62
selfless 36
toxic 40
milk 19, 51, 52
moral 33, 34, 36, 38, 62, 63, 64, 65, 75, 77
mushrooms, or fungi, e.g., fun-guy 1 and fun-guy 2 92
made with love
N
10, 58, 71
gentrification 58
homes 10, 71
dogshit 71
nostalgia 68, 106
new york city
P
25, 37, 65, 78, 88, 103
Abraham Joshua Heschel 37
Aristotle 25, 78, 79, 103
Nicomachean Ethics 103
Poetics 23, 78
Emerson 65
Heidegger 88
pineapples 66
possum 56
process 62, 63, 65, 92, 115
philosopher
Q
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110
queer 48, 50, 51, 55
Queneau 19, 66
queen
R
95, 100, 119
33, 58
reflexivity
religion
S
Saul Williams 42
self-indulgent killer diarist 14
Shakespeare 51, 83
Skylar Diggins 46
social tragedy 8, 23, 27, 30, 40, 48, 61, 75
essay 61, 75
Aristotle 23
Color Purple 23
fossil fuels 75
gender 40
Oedipus 23
poem 8, 30
speech
Asian America 27
#BlackLivesMatter 48
hypermasculinity 41
Sophocles 23, 78
speech 18, 22, 27, 40, 48, 67, 75
funeral 18
Oscar speech 22
sport 40, 43
stereotype 27, 28, 34, 41
T
20, 69
Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Emmett Till 41
talking object
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tragedy, genre of
23, 76, 83
Twain 62
tweet 22
W
woman
24, 29, 32, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 67, 68,
70, 71, 72, 86, 98, 99, 119
Y
yaya
29
yogurt and/or egg
124 Fieldston Upper School
19, 56
Acknowledgments
Thanks to ECFS
Design Center,
Mr. Carl Smith,
Design Director, and
Mr. Kirk Ruebenson,
Fieldston Press
Assistant Manager, for
help with this 2016
edition of Inklings.
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125
126 Fieldston Upper School