Middle Child

HELLO! This week's topic is to describe what the "third" option is for children to keep heritage and respect but still be progressive in creating their own identity.
So.. what is a middle child? The one born between the first and the second? The one with moderate ideals? The one with average grades? Yes and no... The middle child could be born in the middle, could have give-and-take ideals and/or average grades. But this idea of a "third" option is complicated. This "Middle Child" has to be able to balance heritage whilst detaching themselves from "unattractive" traits of such said heritage.
The moment I read the prompt I couldn't find a better way to explain this other than using  Mulan 2. First of all, most Disney movies have their heroines break free from tradition and seek "adventure in the great wide somewhere". Belle, Pocahontas, Ariel, and Mulan herself, but in this super amazing sequel to one of the most awesome Disney movies ever created, there are 3 literal characters; each with different ideals.

• Ting Ting- super traditional, wouldn't DREAM of falling in love with someone her father hadn't engaged her to. Her only purpose is to represent China and that is final! She is the oldest sister and constantly tells Su and Mei to follow her footsteps and behave respectfully. She will make a great Empress.

 

• Mei- obviously the crazy one that hates tradition and just forgets it all to fall in love with Yao. She is the other extremity, completely wants to break apart and "BE LIKE OTHER GIRLS!"

• Su- she is like Mei in that she wants to be herself, but she also respects her tradition. She is shy and quiet, the way she was taught, but is also not afraid of wanting to not be perfect all the time. You could say she is the middle of Ting Ting and Mei.
  

So if that is the case, how do you achieve it? How are you, a real person, supposed to act? How can you honor/celebrate/respect your parents culture but establish your own identity? This is one of the hardest things for people to do. I moved to the U.S when I was 8, i have lived half my life here and half my life in Venezuela. The biggest problems i have with establishing "my own identity" are my culture and traditions. But not really in religion, or other main aspects of cultural identity. I speak Spanish at my house and i still have my Venezuelan accent and use the colloquial dialect of my region. However, there are some things i can't comply with, like:

• Educational Habits
• According to my mother i have an extremely strange school schedule. I don't take enough classes, i don't study enough, i don't divide correctly. It's little things like that that make me FEEL rejected.
• Social Acceptances
• In Venezuela, by the time you are 16 you are considered an adult. Period. By then you are in college, but you still live with your parents. I'm 16, but the moment i get into college i'm out! That is another thing that makes me feel detached, both my parents lived with family until their late 20's and i can't say that that's what i want. 
• Duties
• Out of all of them, this one bothers me the MOST. Since 16 year old Venezuelans behave like 20 year old Americans, for the past 4 years i have been nagged at to do certain things that i am NOW getting around to. When i turned 12 it was like all of a sudden i was 20. But how do i tell my mom that i didn't want to do those things and verbally reject the culture i grew up in from day 1 until i turned 8.

So the question still stands; how do i honor my parent's culture, my culture, without being completely submissive or fully reject it for the one i developed in? It's not easy, i think it just comes down making a decision. Of course you are going to have to concede on some things, and others you are going to have to keep and pass it down to your children and just hope that THEY keep it instead of disregarding it. I came up with the following list of what to keep and how to keep it.

• Language/Dialect- whatever language or dialect your parents used around you as a little kid, those first few words you learned besides "mom" and "dad", is worth considering to keep. This doesn't mean limiting yourself to strictly that but know it enough so its natural and you feel comfortable around it.
• Story- You should know some sort of history about your family, it doesn't have to be extensive but just enough to where you feel like you have roots, this will increase your sense of "loyalty" to your family.
• Cuisine- one really nice thing to know for yourself and your family is to learn to cook exact meals your parents cook, its a nice touch and your parents will be so happy. And now you know how to cook at least something!

Now, again those are just suggestions- I'm 16, what do i really know? But some things you should be able to gain by not being super dependent on your family traditions are:

• Ambition- you need something that makes you happy to pursue and be passionate towards outside your family's norm.
• Acceptance- by opening up yourself, you need to be open-minded about what you are going to encounter.
•  New Beliefs- this one is a bit of a stretch and is very vague. What I mean is that a progressive way to "celebrate" your heritage isn't to strictly believe things that have been believed in always, but if you are open minded you might find yourself believing in things your parents don't and that is okay! It helps keep the balance between loyalty and independence.

Although everything can be really hard to understand or justify to yourself, you just need to make a decision. If you don't decided or regret going towards one side, you WILL be unhappy and live in an uncomfortable state. In the end, it comes down to picking which one of the princesses you want to be, Ting Ting, Mei or Su.

 

 

Poe's Techniques at being better than everyone else

SALUTATIONS! There was absolutely no feelings attached to that title. (I have had this blogpost written for a couple of days and I was just too lazy to press the "Publish" button... that's true procrastination) This week's topic was to read Edgar Allan Poe's story The Fall of the House of Usher and take five techniques that you would copy when writing your own Haunted House story.

The first one, and I think the most important, is to be vague. The human mind is a powerful tool when left to wonder, especially when it is on the topic of horror. Horror happens to be so unnatural in our default way of thinking that everything we ever hear that scares us- even just a little bit- sticks with us forever. Poe is very vague when describing the details. Not the concrete details like color or setting, he makes those VERY clear to make you feel scared or uncomfortable when reading. Instead he is vague in how the characters react. That has to be one of the scariest factors of it. Not knowing everything that surrounds you. The "human" aspect of the story, wait... it is weird to say human, makes it realistic. ALTHOUGH there are many things that are not mentioned about them. Are they ghosts? Alive people? Zombies? You don't know. That's because Poe makes those details so vague that you can believe WHATEVER you want to believe and it still fits within the story. (because the rest tends to be vague too)

Another technique Poe uses that correlates wit the vagueness is a limited amount of characters. He has 3.. 3! This leaves you with no sort of comparison on behavior. They are whatever you make of their actions and they may behave awkwardly or they may not. Again, it leave your mind in this void of "normal-abnormal" that you NEED to fill because we are human (as long as we aren't in a Poe story).

 

Poe's setting has a very prominent influence on the effectiveness of the story. He doesn't make it scary at the beginning, he doesn't make it sad when Madeline dies. Instead he keeps it gloomy throughout the whole story. But what is gloom?! It is darkness, mysterious, unknown. But gloom is what makes us feel creeped out when watching a scary movie or reading stupid chain letters at 3 in the morning. To be able to play with gloom can be tricky. Fright can both be evoked by gloom or create a gloomy atmosphere. Poe does a PERFECT job of being consistent and making the audience feel as if they were right there sitting in the Usher's living room.

 

The literary device that he used all over the story and really impacted me/the reader is symbolism. But not just with anything, with doors. The house has heavy doors, the family tomb has heavy doors, Madeline bangs on a heavy door. Okay, he doesn't use the word heavy every single time but you get the idea. Why, do you think, does Poe describe the doors constantly? TO KEEP THE DEAD IN! It doesn't have to be the dead, whatever you filled the details in with, I believe that they're all dead. Doors definitely add to the gloominess, mystery and vagueness of Poe's story.

 

Lastly, my favorite technique. LITTLE SENSE OF TIME! I LOVE this one! Mostly because I have horrible time perception but also because it makes everything fit together. The only instances that Poe mentions time elapse are when he says that days have passed since they buried Madeleine, and the amount of time before she "dies". This is definitely factor number 1 in the scare techniques. While you are reading you have NO IDEA how long its taking or how long they have been sitting there. And the fact that whenever he mentions time going by, he just says "several days have passed" and not, "five days later". again, its very vague and time is crazy. It subconsciously draws you in because we value time to much that thinking a lot of time went by scares us jus the same as thinking that it all happened in a short amount of time.

 

To retaliate, Poe is a wonderful genius that makes everyone else seem irrelevant and whatever he did was utter perfection.