Tommy Ireland
Dr. Ellis
Understanding Literature
21 March 2013
Event 5 Analysis
My
event that I attended was March 19th Zen Meditation in Hammerman
House on February 26th 2013 and in this paper I am comparing
individual opinion in Bharati Mukherjee’s “A Father,” Stephanie Shapiro’s
“Serving up Hope,” Richard Hague’s “Directions for Resisting the SAT,” and Gary
Gildner’s “First Practice.” Individual
opinion is a very important characteristic to have and to voice. It gives everyone a sense of identity and can
greatly affect the mindset and opinions.
Individual
opinion plays a very important role in Zen Meditation. I have noticed this ever since I have had my
first Zen meditation experience in senior year of high school. Since Zen Meditation involves so much of
inner thought and centering of the mind, personal opinion appears in these
thoughts. Your opinions on the world and
everything in your life are amplified since your thoughts are centered so
greatly. A great example is one of my
personal experiences in this session. My
opinions on religion were amplified greatly during this session. I came to realize that I sometimes lean on
religion usually when the times are going good.
The past few weeks have been some of the best weeks of my life and I realized
that I have been praying more often because of it. I had no idea that this was the way I viewed
religion. It is very important to
realize that individual opinions are amplified in Zen Meditation because people
who want to figure out really what is important in their life can use this
exercise in their favor. Letting people
know about the usefulness of Zen Meditation has become a minor goal to me now.
Bharati
Mukherjee’s “A Father” also involves individual opinion. In this case, it involves personal opinion
about a daughter getting pregnant. An
example of this found earlier on in the work.
“Babli would abort, of course. He
knew his Babli. It was the only possible
option if she didn’t want to bring shame to the Bhowmick family.” Mr. Bhowmick states his individual opinion
very casually and bluntly. Without even
confronting his daughter about his suspicions, he automatically created his own
opinion about what his daughter would do.
He assumed that she would abort the baby in order to prevent shame being
brought to the family. Nowadays,
teenagers want freedom at younger and younger ages. This is important here because teens now want
responsibility for things such as this.
Mr. Bhowmick’s daughter, if just reading this segment, might want to keep
the baby and raise it. It is important for everyone to have a individual
opinion such as the sensitive topic of abortion.
Stephanie
Shapiro’s “Serving up Hope” has a small section of individual opinion. “Several years ago, neither Brock nor Lewis
could have progressed beyond dead-end jobs in the restaurant business. Now,
they practically run the bustling café.”
The narrator expresses her opinion strongly here. She talks about how they couldn’t have gotten
a job because of their job problem. Just
because of their drug problem, does not mean they cannot be successful. An important lesson can be learned from
this. Having an opinion about someone
does not mean it is a right one. Just
because someone may have a problem or seem to have a problem, does not mean
they are unable to achieve goals.
Another way of saying this is never judge a book by its cover!
Richard
Hague’s “Directions for Resisting the SAT” has an example of individual opinion
as well. Besides the title, the first
two lines of the poem says, “Do not believe in October or May or in any
Saturday morning with pencils.” In these
lines, the main idea of the whole poem is expressed. He wants to tell you about how the SATs are
not important. Even the title gets his
point across. The first two lines is a
great example because he tells his opinion in a form of a command. This is one of the many ways to express
individual opinions. The important thing
to take away from this is that everyone in the world has opinions. Since there are so many opinions out there,
there are also so many ways to voice opinions.
Learning how to voice different opinions in different ways is a very
effective way of communicating. If you
feel strong enough about your opinion, then telling it is a command can be a
very effective method.
Gary Gildner’s “First Practice” is the last work that has
an example of individual opinion. An
example of this is found in the second stanza.
“OK, he said, he said I take that to mean you hungry men who hate to
lose as much as I do.” Here, one of the
characters takes a bold assumption and thinks that the all of the players look
like they are just as motivated as the coach.
This also is another case of judging a book by a cover. He looked at all the players and assumed they
were ready to play. Even if they looked
ready, they still could not be mentally prepared. The lesson is that you really cannot truly
know how someone feels just by external appearance.
Overall, these works including individual opinions. Individual opinion can be found everywhere,
not just in these works. It is important
to find your opinions and find the appropriate way to voice them throughout the
world.
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