Maslow's Hierarchy & The Night Trilogy

According to the hierarchical nature by Abraham Maslow, from the more fundamental to less, people seek their  needs in physiological, safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualization. He also stated that a person will tend to abandon the higher needs in order to pay attention to sufficiently meeting the lower needs.
In The Night Trilogy, Nazis started holocaust toward Jews by taking away the needs of them in the top part of the Hierarchy model - Self-actualization and esteem. They began marking Jews with unique yellow starts on their apparel to distinguish them from other people. Then they moved down toward belonging and safety where they took away valuable stuffs from Jews and moved them into Ghetto, away from their home. Jews were also separated with their families by lots of segmentation processes. Later on, Nazis abused physiological needs of Jews as well. They were tortured with cruel discrimination, punishments and experiments. Later when their physiological needs were threatened, their esteem or anything else was long gone. Jews were busy taking care of themselves, holding on to own life, and the survival from all cruel treatments they faced in the death camp.

In the real life and in the normal life, people are focused on keeping their esteems. But as the condition worsen, their instinct move focus down to their belongings, safety, and oneself. Once people reach the lowest poverty they could ever reach, they are no long aware of what others would view them. They hold on to whatever jobs they can in order to survive. Once you lose everything you have, there would be nothing more important than safety itself. People would seek for any place that they could safely spend over the night. At the very end, humans are driven so desperate and/or insane when their health, food, sleep, or whatever that are necessary for survival becomes vulnerable.

Allegory: The Sneetches

The Allegory contains the story with two levels of meaning. One could be easily shown through the story directly. Underneath it, there is another hidden meaning that the elements in the stories actually represent. In the story "The Sneetches" the main characters are the Sneetches with the star on the belly, with no star on the belly and the Monkey Beam guy.
As the story start, the Sneetches with the star on their bellies feel superior over those without the star. They excluded those who do not have the star on their bellies from them. And the Sneetches with no star on their bellies try to fit in their societies but they failed everytime. This represent the real world where certain groups of people bully others by their appearance or who they are, solely because they are not alike.
When the author brings out the Monkey guy, who take advantages of the Sneetches stupidity over their acceptance of each others' uniqueness, he reflects the people who see people bullying someone and taking advantage of the fact. Monkey guy introduces the way where starless Sneetches can get star on their bellies. Then the original Sneetches with star get mad at the fact that starless ones become same as them. Again the Monkey guy introduce them the way to erase the stars so they don't look like newly-starred Sneetches and made tons of money off them. Those two groups of Sneetches keep on doing this work back and forth to be differ or same to the other one.
Later, two groups of Sneetches no longer were able to distinguish who was originally who and realized how stupid they were. Then the monkey guy left, satisfied at the fact that he made tons of money off those Sneetches and laughed at their stupidity. Surprisingly, both kinds of Sneetches finally recognized that they were so wrong and stupid, and learned to accept each other's difference.
At the end, the author sends the social, moral lessons that difference can not make another either superior or inferior. Instead of directly label the people in the real world, the story could be fun and contains two different meanings. It seemed to be about Sneetches' learning lesson, but it actually had deeper meaning that apply to the human world.

Allegory: Terrible Things

Allegory is the literature work with two levels of meaning, a literal one and a symbolic one. In the book "Terrible Things" written by Eve Bunting, the author created different animals in the forest to symbolize the different kinds of people that were slaughtered by Nazis Hitler. Instead of directly place real people in the story, Bunting could send the message through forest animals who played the role as human species.
When the white rabbits saw the shadows and evil eyes of the terrible things that are taking away other animals species by species, they just felt careless and relieved that they weren't the one who were being taken away. This is substituting the scene where certain groups of people carelessly let other groups like Gypse, Jews, disabled, homosexuals and Catholics being taken away by Nazis to be tortured. They would felt relieved that they weren't same people as those people and they were all focusing on prejudices of those animals.
But later on, the terrible things once more came back get the white rabbits as well. The white rabbits were freaking out and screaming out for help from others. But it was too late; no one was hardly left to help them. Few of them could survive at the end. They questioned themselves that what if they have cared and helped others when they were being taken by Nazis who also are just one of many groups of people. They wondered if they could have stopped the tragedy of losing those people to the terrible things if they have stuck together with one another and fight against them.
These few left animals among white rabbits also represent the people back then, those of few who survived. The author is precisely criticizing the people who survived and or excluded from Nazis' lists of genocides. They turned away from people who were holocausted by Nazis when they could have actually all stuck together and protect each other from Nazis just because they were safe, that they were not the one who were being slaughted. Then when they realized the Nazis were coming after them, they wanted and expected someone to come rescue them. But there were no other people left to rescue them because they were all taken when they turned their back at them.
The story itself primarily shows how careless and prejudice animals and white rabbits are, but to go deeper inside, the whole plot represented the real human society with the genocide based on prejudice. In this Allegory, Bunting used the animals to show the different kinds of people, misjudged by stereotypes, and turned away by others who refused to step forward and help them fight against discrimination and the holocaust.

"The Rime of Ancient Mariner"

In "The Rime of Ancient Mariner", the imagination was shown as the dead people come back from death and the spirit follow the ship around. Also, the mariner was feeling guilt inside his mind after killing bird and the spirit that loved the bird followed the guy to curse him which shows the idealism in the story.
Also the author expressed the intuition when the guy had to be designated to stay alive when a life wins only one guy and death wins the rest.
By mariner's telling story with a lesson of don't kill harmless creature, it also used the idealism of the romanticism.
The author is trying to say that it will cause the bad effect if we kill the harmless life. When the guy kill the harmless, sweet bird, it cause the death to everyone in the ship except for himself.

Big Question - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

In the "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", the author has major question if it is better to live young forever in the past. The children in this book, all the peculiar children are living in the loop under headmistress' care. Since there are lots of dangers that are desperate for their lives, they are meant to be kept safe under her property where there's no actual future. Thanks to that, children there are mostly around century old.
But the protagonist in the book, Jacob, didn't find that it is all fantastic and perfect to live like that. Jacob questioned if they are just all plain happy in the loop where time stuck into one day. They couldn't see any change in the world; history, technology, nothing. When Jacob expelled those new stories, everyone was amazed and curious. They were stuck in the old, past.
Also the peculiar children living in the loop, they were all playing and acting as children. They were reckless, irresponsible, and dependent. Human being, as they age, it should be natural to gain knowledge, grow responsible, independent and wise. But by living young forever, they still depend on headmistress' decision. Their knowledge stopped in where it was left off when they stop growing in the past.
Also they are protected by headmistress in the loop for good. They were young, physically at least, and never be expected to be a grown up. In nature, all the living things grow independent. The eagle throw its babies down the cliff from the nest when they are thought to be old enough and expected to fly. Many of other animals chase away their babies as well when they think their babies are old enough to take care of oneself.  Imagine that eagle never chase away and throw down its babies down the cliff. Those babies will probably never be able to fly and expect their parents to protect and feed them even when they grow up. In the loop, along with being young forever, they never get to learn how to take care of themselves in the world without their leaders. They will be expecting someone to protect, look after, and lead them forever.
The author tries to tell that it is not all that bad to grow old and flows with the time. Sometimes, stuck in the old day and being young forever can be more delicate.

Miss PEREGRINE's Home for Peculiar Children

 For the Gothic novel, I've chosen this book, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Jacob, who has had a grandpa who used to tell him the fantasy tales, got his life messed up after his grandpa's mysterious death, or murder. He used to believe in those stories, and sometimes terrified, until he turned old enough to open his eyes to realistic world.
  Before his grandpa died, he was turning old and seemed to be getting little crazier. Even the day he died, Jacob and all his family didn't believe the grandpa was sane. Then left with mysterious words, the grandpa was gone forever.
  For a long after his death, Jacob suffered severe mental break down. Then he finally got a chance to go figure out the secret of the grandpa's words. But as he go deeper into the mystery, the more everything seems to be complicated and mysterious.
 Despite how grandpa used to tell him about haunting ghosts and creatures, nobody, even Jacob wasn't going to trust his story. I wondered why couldn't grandpa Portman had explained and told seriously about the truth to Jacob. If he predicted someday, danger might come for himself and his grandson, he should have considered preparing Jacob while he still could help him. Also if they truly loved grandpa Portman as a family, they should have more faith in him, and listened to him no matter how nonsense it was. As a family who love, they should have paid more attention to him and cared about him.

THEME of SHANGHAI GIRLS
It has been obvious how someone's life can change so much. In the life, there's something that you just can't have control over. It is quite frustrating to admit that you don't have total control over your fate, but that is the way nature works. Pearl, as a main character of the book,  faces the inevitable misfortune in her life. Through that, she fell a lot from the top model of the magazine in Shanghai to a arranged wife of a son of a poor Chinese family. She struggles a lot through the story to fight her fate. No matter how hard she tries to work things out, dull amount of time flies away with no or very little changes left. At some point, it seems meaningless and worthless to put an effort to fight her fate when it takes so much time and effort. 
But it does not necessarily mean that your life is always have been determined into one fate. There are lots of things you can change with your effort over time. But life usually works this way. There is a given fate, sometimes inevitable, and you will either accept it or try to fight for another way. It could take just a second, days, or even years to make a difference. 

Pearl's life and responsibilities

Pearl, as a main protestant in the book SHANGHAI GIRLS, take a role as a older sister who needs to fight and make her sister and her own destiny that is left with them in the land of America. 

No matter how the life gets to her, and how hard and complicated it gets, she still has so many responsibilities with her. She has to look after her daughter, her sister, and her husband whom she recently found out that he doesn't belong there in that family just like herself and her sister. 

This makes me wonder if the people would have that many things to be responsible in their complicated lives. For now, I can't really imagine how this life could be that complicated. It is kind of complicated enough for me to balance families, friends, schools and works, but it isn't as complicated and tangled with that many factors to take care of as Pearl does. But it feels like someday in the lifetime, there will be the time when everyone get into complicated life. I wish Pearl could handle her troubled life fast and wisely.

Shanghai Girls

      Pearl and May have been living with their arranged husbands since they arrived in America. To me everything seems so ridiculous and awful. I wouldn't be able to breathe and live the normal life in that environment. They need to work for them everyday, don't get any allowance, don't get to have any privacy, and live with strangers. They don't even love their husbands or even barely know who they are. They don't get to make their own decisions; they just need to obey their father-in-law and their husbands.
      It is so great that we get to choose what we want to do, who I want to live with, where I want to go, and whatever decision I want to make for my own as long as I put enough effort to it. 

Quote from Shanghai Girls

I've asked myself the same question many times these past months, and I still don't know the answer.

- Shanghai Girls (p116)

      Sometimes, I just feel as lost as Pearl for a long time. I throw myself a question about same thing over and over, but the answer doesn't always appear right away as I need. If it lasts for long time it usually stresses me out and bothers me, but that's how life is. I have to work through the problems and look for the right answer for me.               

SHANGHAI GIRLS

  Shanghai  girls is the book that is drawing two girls' surviving life from China to America when Japanese attacked China. It starts with the pretty basic and simple lives of these siblings in Shanghai. But the story gets intense as more events happen around their lives. These two girls start as the top, luxurious girls who work as models of magazines in Shanghai. But the war, it changed everything around them. I've never get to thought about every detail that war can bring to citizens' lives. When I had thought of the word 'war', it just appeared to be something that the soldiers kill their enemies and lots of explosions. 

   Through this book, I could actually see the every pain that the citizens can experience throughout their lifetime just by one war. The two girls lost their parents, friends, ones they loved, and their own freedoms. They had to suffer the poverty, and there were no more freedoms left for them. They were sold to one old Chinese man to get married to his sons from their father's debt. Their whole lives were at the mess. Even though they have been trying through out the stories to escape from their fates, they found it much more complicated and difficult to escape.

Today's Education

    We are all expected to go to school until college. People claim that it is to prepare us for the better future where we will need to go find and make our own ways. However, in fact, barely half of us who are getting educated these days actually "learn" what we really need. The things we really need to learn, it is not some kind of formulas in the math textbooks that we probably will not even see in rest of our lives. It is not the economical graphs for lessons that is forced into our heads either. But this fact is highly ignored. Nowadays, the purpose of the schools seems to be just holding on to the students for half of the days, force whole bunch of information into their heads despite what their real interest is, and train them into all same ways. This surely will not help people to find their ways in their futures.
Therefore the school itself needs a change before trying to force every student into one same closet with 0 flexibility. The educational systems should develop various ways that students can learn through which fit best for them. Instead of filling up the textbooks with all fixed formulas, textbook can bring out better opportunities to students when they actually fill up the textbooks with something that students can really use their brains and think to figure out the problems. If the schools educate their students in a different angle than it is now, it can provide better dimensions in study for the students.


http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html


http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html