Blogging Around

I chose to first comment on Anna's blog which was about the theme of culture in The Kite Runner. I responded with the following:

"Anna,
I love the point that you bring up. As we've learned before, culture plays such a huge part in the everyday actions of people and the relations that people have. Culture is often thought of in the context of expressing oneself openly and freely, however you bring up a fascinating point that in the novel culture restricts one's individuality.

Culture is often the roots of a story. It's fun to see what role it plays in stories. Culture determines the actions of characters. Culture determines the voice that the novel is trying to communicate with you. Culture is what keeps the story alive.

However, I can kind of relate with Amir. I can feel the limits culture brings even upon myself. I guess the reason why culture brings its limits is because it is what has worked in the past and tries to shower its success upon you. But that raises another question. What's more important: success or the freedom to choose whatever you want? I guess culture somtimes struggles to find the middle ground. Hopefully as culture passes through generations, it will be able to blend and find that necessary change."


Next, I chose to respond to Mackenzie's blog which explored the topic of vulnerability in human nature. She talked about Amir's vulnerability in the novel and the vulnerability of humans as a whole as modeled by the Stanford Prison Experiment. I commented with the following:

"Mackenzie,
Awesombe job with this! At first like a good amount of people, I really despised Amir. I just couldn't take it anymore. His actions, behaviors, thoughts; it irritated me so much. However, I failed to look at the other point of view and your blog addresses that issue.

The vulnerability of human nature is a deep topic to explore. All humans have weaknesses; we were born with mistakes. In that sense, like you said can we blame characters gone wrong for the blunders they have committed? But then again, can we use human nature as an excuse for their mistakes? It's controversial.

I agree with you that the experiment was interesting. It frightened me though. If humans have this innate corrupted nature in them, can we save us from oursevles? How long will it be until it gets the best of us? Is there anything we can do to fix this problem within human nature?

Your post also mentions how important rules are. It reminds me of episodes on TV where societies/cities without rules become chaotic. We need limitations on power to keep order. We need laws to stop crime. We need rules in grammar to prevent messes. Rules are everywhere. The connection between rules and human nature is a peculiar one. We need rules to keep the negatives of human nature in check. How do we learn, then, to live when all the rules are thrown out the book? When the game has been changed? Can we?"