Our Statue Of Liberty
“Je me sens comme si je me rendais dans mon pays”
For years and years the Statue of Liberty has sat high upon her perch, watching over her city and her country. As more and more time passed, more and more tragedies occurred, and our lovely Lady Liberty stood frozen. It wasn't as if she could help it, she was doing exactly what they wanted her to do, to stand still and look pretty. Unfortunately for them Lady Liberty is much more than a pretty face, which is why she feels as if she could’ve done much more for her country, instead she was forced to remain still and silent. A silent symbol of values we’ve lost, and she feels she's to blame.
The Statue of Liberty is what you would call a bystander, what we aren't aware of is that there are different types of bystanding that aren't all negative. An article on LinkedIn explained there were different types of bystanders, and to go even further, there are different categories for them. Lady Liberty is a political bystander. She's a bystander known as a ‘committer’, which is someone who's passionate about their involvement, emotionally as well as physically and mentally.
“Après avoir regardé le premier avion, j'ai essayé de crier, lorsque le second était en vue, j'ai eu du mal à bouger”
The tragedy of 9/11 was something that she witnessed first hand, a woman of her size could've plucked one of those planes out of the sky with ease. Instead she was too busy fighting to move and struggling to do something, anything. After it occurred she could've used her voice and brought people together instead of watching us grow further apart through fear. Her lips were sealed shut and she tried so hard to be heard, she screamed and screamed for someone to hear her, but it had no effect.
Parts of our Lady of Liberty are now withering away due to erosion, no attempts to restore her, because ‘it's not that serious yet’. Now when you see her, you can't look away from her dead emotionless eyes, you can't help but stare at what's eroding away, it seems there's no longer any substance to her. All you can see is a woman whose crumbling from being forced to remain silent and still for so long. She continues to stand tall, because she doesn't want to disappoint us any further, she doesn't want us to crumble like she has.
Now the real question is, ‘who’s to blame?’ Her creators, her people. They made it so that all she could do was stand and be silent, a pretty face for our country. Uncle Sam had a voice, a purpose. All she's good for is to be looked at, and maybe that's because we never really had any intention of holding up the principles that she stands for.
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Our Statue Of Liberty
About This Piece:
It’s a Mad, Mad World
Throughout the book ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ you see a variety of people both sane and not so sane. Throughout the book it seems apparent that the characters considered insane are much healthier than the sane characters. As far as McMurphy goes, I see him as an exception because he’s somewhere in the middle of that. I think some people can see him as both, because his methodology is so outside of the box it’s crazy or crazily ingenious. I think that his dynamic of being in between both sane and insane actually helps the reader to see and understand why the insane patients are healthier.
My first example is Chief Bromden, who suffers from hallucinations while also pretending to be deaf and dumb. After watching his father become small and weak the chief also felt that way. While he was a chronic patient, and did not commit himself, at the end of the book his delusions have shown a massive decrease. Having interacted and having befriended McMurphy, he starts to feel big again, he starts talking, and he escapes. While Chief is physically healthy, McMurphy helps him realize that he’s mentally healthy as well. I believe that the chief’s problem was that his self esteem wasn’t at a healthy level, which is why he felt so small. Nurse Ratched wanted to make sure his self esteem stayed low, as well as the other patients, especially the ones who committed themselves. In fact I believe that their self esteem issues are the acute patients only problems.
Secondly, there’s Nurse Ratched. She is strict and mechanical in almost everything that she does. Nurse Ratched has to have absolute authority for her to function, so she surrounds herself with people that will submit to her authority, which gives her complete control on the ward. In order to make sure she has that control she puts the patients against each other, so they won’t trust each other or even attempt to work together. Ratched also emasculates them and damages their self esteem so they don’t even feel confident enough to fight back. Ratched also punishes them harshly when all else fails. While the woman seems very put together, being so uptight can put a strain on one’s mental and physical health. Nurse Ratched is already too addicted to her power to loosen up, so if one thing slips and she loses just the slightest bit of control, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself, she wouldn’t know how to function, and so she’s trapped herself in this never ending loop.
McMurphy’s behavior towards Nurse Ratched, and his many attacks against her authority show us this. After the incident with the baseball game she loses her calm cool composure and yells at them to resume their duties. After that she exerts extensive measures to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, since she realized that she’d lost control that day. It makes you realize that she has no problem doing whatever it takes for things to go her way. When she found Billy with Candy and threatened to tell his mother, Ratched knew exactly how that would make Billy feel, exactly what it would do to him, and she kept going. I’m not sure if she knew that Billy would kill himself over it, but if she did, then it helps you to see that she has no boundaries and is only looking out for herself.
I also strongly believe that by the fact that the acutes have committed themselves despite showing no real mental issues that make them a danger to themselves or others that in some cases, you can choose to go ‘insane.’ If the outside world isn’t looking too good, or if you’re scared about not having a future, madness is a way out. If you’re institutionalized, you have people taking care of you and you really don’t have anything to worry about. In conclusion, I think I can sum it up with this one quote:
"Memories can be vile. Repulsive little brutes, like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality. There is no sanity clause. So when you find yourself locked down in an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember: There's always madness. You can just step outside and close the door, and all those dreadful things that happened, you can lock them away. Madness... is an emergency exit." - The Joker
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It's A Mad Mad World
About This Piece: