Morals Are Created

Earlier in the year I read "The Lowest Animal" and as we dive deeper into the Inner Monsters unit, the quote I keep recalling is this one regarding morals

He is the only animal that has it. It is the secret of his degradation. It is the qualitywhich enables him to do wrong. It has no other office. It is incapable of performing any other function. It could never have been intended to perform any other. Without it, man could do no wrong...

I believe that the concepts of good and evil are just societal constructs. We're simply being in our everyday lives and in the actions we do, yet assign unneeded adjectives to describe our motives, our actions, and our thoughts. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde shows how it is a man made thing, with humans good and evil morals are created within our minds, but Jekyll creates a tangible potion. His search and experiments to separate good and bad doesn't show that humans are inherently good OR evil, but that we are inherently curious, we desire to form concrete definition and proof for things that may not be explainable.

SHE lost but WE are winning

All throughout history it's been a trend that sometimes a sacrifice is needed to achieve a goal and make progress. This was demonstrated by many women during the Women's Right Movement. Alice Paul was one such woman who believed in radical reform to advance the rights of women, she went on a hunger strike in jail for the cause. It was seen during the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King, his assassination helped open the eyes of many, even those who were prejudice were saddened by his death. Though he was vital in improving the rights of minorities while he was alive, his death did even more. Everyday soldiers put their lives on the line to protect citizens of the United States. Edna's suicide in The Awakening may have seemed like a loss at first, but it was needed to instigate a push towards  equality, it was a personal loss but not a loss for humanity.

Rise

Though in America, us women have made considerable advances as far as our rights and freedoms are concerned, in many underdeveloped and developing countries women are still viewed as property or a means to an end (necessary to make children).  In an article I read on CBS News, Afghanistan is considered one of the worst countries for women to live in. 87% of the women are illiterate, and 80% face forced marriages. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, this oppression is seen as Mariam and Laila are abused by Rasheed and forced to wear burqas. When the Taliban comes to power, laws are made that ban them from going in public without a man and prevents women from getting an education. After trying to escape Rasheed's abuse, Mariam and Laila are sent right back because private matters are not the concern of the government. So though in America women possess many freedoms, it is important that we still advocate for the rights of those who cannot advocate for themselves. Even though the book is nonfiction, it contains the all too true realities of what women endure in not just Afghanistan, but hundreds of other countries as well.

Shell Shock

To us, they fought their last battle days, months, even years ago. But to them, they fight is every single day. It is not only physical injuries carried home by soldiers, but those of the mind as well, with the most common being PTSD. Though it can be interpreted that Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five is actually time traveling, I believe he is hallucinating as a result of PTSD and often those hallucinations seem very real to sufferers of it. Throughout the story Billy has nightmares, is startled very easily, and constantly is recalling horrific events in his life. As a reader we may even begin feeling helpless as a result of the spontaneous flipping through time, similar to how those with PTSD feel. Vonnegut wants to convey to his readers through the experiences of Billy that war is a terrible thing and warps and twists the human mind in many ways. It also makes sense that he would include the disorder in his story because he himself was in war, and some of the events in the story parallel with his life. I think that the way in which Vonnegut wrote the story was very ingenious, on the surface it is a typical sci-fi book much like sufferers of PTSD seem "normal" on the outside, but then you go deeper and realize there is actually much more to the story, like there is much more to a person.

Close Cultured

On a broad scale, Things Fall Apart began spiraling downhill when the white people began entering villages. Two separate cultures with such drastic differences will not blend together like a melting pot, but fight for dominance.  This is because though fundamental morals are still the same, exceptions to those morals are different. An example of this is when Aneto is hung in Things Fall Apart because he killed a man whom he was disputing with. The Africans believed that sometimes murder was necessary in certain disagreements or for sacrifices, but the white men believed that they should only kill as punishment of a murderer. On a smaller scale, the book was doomed from the start. Okonkwo was so close minded and unwilling to at least contemplate views that differed from his- his stubbornness foreshadowed his suicide. He was so sickened by the moral code and ways of the other culture that killing himself was the only escape. He exemplified the fact that the morals we are raised with cannot be easily broken, even if challenged.

Hero

Malala Yousafzai is an activist for female education. In her home of Swat Valley, the Taliban would prevent girls from attending school. Malala recognized that education is not a privilege, but a right to every human being. She began writing a blog under a pseudonym for BBC, but would eventually be in interviews and a documentary. Plato would say that she "left the cave". Her beliefs were dangerous though, leading to her being shot in the face on October 9, 2012, yet she still treks on. I could write pages about how much I admire Malala and that I wish I could be even half of the person she is. She's MY idea of a hero.
The official definition for hero courtesy of dictionary.com is "a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal". So ultimately, it is objective to the person/society.  However, there is a common denominator between all heroes. Each stand up for what they believe in, as corny as that sounds.
With that said, Malala is a hero. Grendel and Beowulf are not heroes.
Beowulf is a very static and flat character. All we learn about him in Beowulf is that he is good at killing and he's quite barbaric. We don't know his inner feelings or aspirations. He isn't a hero if he doesn't particularly stand for anything. Grendel is a hypocrite. He scorns humans for rewriting history... But in writing his story, he is imitating the Shaper that he despises so much.

Actions DON'T Speak Louder Than Words?

"Do as I say, not as I do" is something we have ALL heard our parent say. Naturally, they want their kids to be better than themselves and achieve bigger things. So when my mom hounds me about college applications (though I have many already done) I don't think "Oh, she has never even been to college, all she has is a high school diploma''.  I think "Wow, she loves me SO much".
Is it okay when an author does this?
Not in a loving gesture to a close friend or family member, but in a philosophical set of rules for millions of readers? A small movement among libertarians?
Ayn Rand has written several books that contain objectivist principals, The Fountainhead being the focus in this post. Two of many tenets of Rand's Objectivism are that the purpose of one's life should be to pursue their OWN happiness- and tying in with that, laissez-faire capitalism is the only social/economic system that embodies these individual rights. This is shown in The Fountainhead through Roark, he could be a dictionary definition of selfishness. Even though he may have had his reasons, let's face it, he truly is only interested in his self. Society means nothing to him, opinions and criticisms mean nothing. He destroyed Corlandt homes, not to lash out at society, but to quell a pain within himself. Even when he fell in love with Dominique, he still wouldn't be with her till it was in his favor, he would not make any sacrifices for her.
Rand wrote these principals, expressed them in her book, but does not live by them. This is where do as I say, not as I do becomes hypocrisy. Who you love is considered an extension of yourself. The man she loved and married, Frank O' Conner, sacrificed his acting career, dealt with her affair with Nathaniel Branden, and invested himself in her interest. He did not pursue his own happiness, but hers. The extension of her being clashed with her own beliefs. Or were they even her beliefs? She, herself, defied Objectivism when diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly Social Security and Medicare which are not present in a laissez-faire economy are acceptable. Even if she wasn't a hypocrite, it proves how weak her beliefs were. It she truly believed in Objectivism, the thought of death would not have made her sway.