The Humiliation of Love

I haven't experienced the devastation one feels when they love someone, yet these feeling are not reciprocated. After all, I am only thirteen. Yet in the book Girl With a Pearl Earring, the character Greitel, who is only fourteen at the beginning of the story, most definitely has experienced this feeling. Greitel is sold as a house maid to the house of the famous Dutch painter Vermeer, and as she begins to clean and tidy up the house of this famous painter and his wife and children, her curiosity blooms. She begins to wonder what mysteries lay in his studio, and she soon finds herself exploring its nooks and crannies, even though anyone other than Vermeer is forbidden to enter it. The painter Vermeer soon gives Greitel the task of his studio cleaner, although even Vermeer's wife is prohibited to enter it. Once Greitel begins to work alongside the magnificent painter Vermeer, and help to clean his tools, mix his paints, and finally, model for one of his paintings, Greitel has found  herself fallen in love with the Dutch painter. No sooner does Greitel admit to herself that she is infatuated with Vermeer than do Vermeer's wife and the other housemaids assume they had an affair, and Greitel must suffer the devastating humiliation of being kicked out of Vermeer's house for supposed adultery, although no such act was conducted.

I myself have never been in this situation, so how can I relate? Greitel and I may only be one or two years apart, but the centuries that separate us make her harmless act look incredibly guilty if I were to conduct the same thing. I cannot feel the shattering and suffocating feeling of love gone wrong. But who ever said that I cannot relate?

Greitel's sadness and humiliation in the concluding chapters of this book are much like my feelings with my grades. I don't love my grades, and my grades are not able to reciprocate whatever feeling I feel for them because they are numbers on paper, they do not show emotion. Yet a bad grade is cold and hard, and reprimands me for not having studied harder, for not getting enough sleep the night before. It mocks me and demeans me, telling me I do not have the potential to go places and to be intelligent. It tells me that I am not trying enough, I am never trying enough. A good grade, in contrast, embraces me in its grip and tells me that this once, I really did do good enough, and that I have a reason to be happy instead of feeling guilt for my happiness. A bad grade casts me out, and society laughs at me, but a good grade embraces me in its arms and ensures my safety.

A Modern Prophet

My relationship with Science Fiction; whether it be books, movies, magazine articles, et cetera, is one that is fraught with dislike and mixed feelings. Ever since I was little, I was disturbed by science fiction, and the images it left frozen in my mind. However, I recently began reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Perhaps it's that Kurt Vonnegut's version of science fiction is rather quirky, or that elements of the book are more like historical fiction, or even that the deeper philosophical meaning found in the book is one that I profoundly admire; whatever the reason, I find myself truly loving and enjoying this work of science fiction.

The premise of the story is that a rather ordinary man, who is in no way special and is almost an outcast; in society, among his friends, and among his peers, is given the ability to time travel. This man's name is Billy Pilgrim, and the one component of Billy Pilgrim that makes him such an intriguing character is that Billy Pilgrim is "unstuck" in time. His time travel takes place within his own life, and he therefore repeatedly travels to events that have taken place in his life; to the future where he learns of his death, to the planet of Tralfmadore, where Billy encounters the Tralfmadorians who no believes exist except for Billy, and, most importantly, to the horrors that Billy experienced while fighting in World War II. Yet the part of the book I find most engaging are Billy's visits with the Tralfmadorians, for they teach Billy to view his ordinary, depressing life in a whole new and different perspective. Instead of focusing on each event in life as an individual  occurrence, they look at life as a whole and look at its beauty rather than its faults. They describe humans as having one long tube to look through, and that tube can only focus on one thing at a time rather than focusing on the huge, glorious picture that life is made up of.

Whilst reading, I began to wonder, why was this power of time travel, or rather, being "unstuck" in time, given to a man of such ordinary stature and being. Why Billy Pilgrim? This nobody, who is perfectly ordinary, is given the extraordinary power of being unstuck in time, and experiencing the world of the Tralfamadorians. After Billy's encounters with the Tralfamadorians, he is sent back to earth to spread the word, to explain the people this whole new perspective on life that forces people to look at the bigger picture, at how beautiful their life indeed was. In a way, Billy Pilgrim is almost like a prophet, for he is simply an ordinary man, yet he is then given this power and therefore begins to tell people to look at their lives in a different way, to interpret events as thy've never thought of them before. Life is not a journey, but rather one wonderful moment in the continuation of Time. Life possesses no beginning and no end, and when someone dies it is not sad for you still have memories, pieces of them that you are able to hold on to forever, and those memories are really what truly made up the person and your relationship with that person. And so, perhaps the reason I enjoy this book is that it's a mixture of science fiction, historical fiction, and the introduction of a modern-day prophet. Whatever the reason, I am excited to learn what deeper meaning lies within this book, and I am intrigued as to how this book will conclude itself.