The "Pursuit" in the Pursuit of Happiness

We have paid too much attention only on the "happiness" part of the "pursuit of happiness"but ignored the importance of the act of pursuing. Petra and Evan brought up the interesting point that being happy is making the decision to reach the top goals, having the opportunity to pursue anything. I cannot agree more on this as I think of what I have right now and what I want to have and who I want to be in the future. The idea of not having the chance to make one's own decision to even think about a dream haunts me. The pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of property, and the pursuit of anything wil not realize if no one is pursuing. After reading the chapter about happiness a history, I found that  there could be an opposite argument. Lockean view, according to the chapter, sees desire without limit as dangerous, as with desire focused only on self. Tocqueville also asserts the harm of the restlessness of the American life and human desire. Is the act of pursuing happiness human desire? The desire of becoming happy, in this sense could be destructive because desire, a private pleasure, corrupts civic virtue, which is essentially the foundation of individuals and societies. Do I want to work for something that is impossible for me to reach really hard? Should I just focus on what I have right now and stop dreaming but instead make the best of right now? Mill would probably say the latter. I found his idea of indirectly getting to the ultimate happiness very interesting. He claims that happiness is an end and there are lots of means to achieve it. Aiming at something else and find happiness on the way fascinates me because the something else here could mean anything, anything I already am and have right this second, and I will be able to find happiness along the way without consciously making any decision. 

There were students from China back in the twenties?

I was browsing through the St. Olaf Catalog from 1926 and found that there were two Chinese students! There were also one from Japan and a 2 from Canada. It was a surprise for me since who would think that international students would come to a small liberal arts college in Northfield. However, Elma Thorson does not sound Chinese to me, So I wonder if she was a second generation Chinese? Or even third? Or an American studied in China? So I went to the yearbook, curious about what she looks like. Here's a description and a picture.

I think that "American school" really solve the confusion. It was just a cool discovery.   

Liberal arts at St. Olaf

What I learn from the reading today is that an liberal art education is not just the education that make you more well-rounded. A liberal arts college is a "freedom school". I think it still depends on the students in the school to make the institution free. We need to know "our own minds in order to be good citizens of a free society", and know how to make what we've learn in the school "free" in terms of make them our own. St.Olaf has been a co-ed school since the beginning, contributing a egalitarian system for both women and men to pursue this freedom. I think this freedom is a different from the freedom we talked about first semester last year. Freedom in this context means the complexity and fluidity of intelligence that can be used to different disciplines. Sometimes I wonder if an liberal arts education is necessary or beneficial. It is a great thing to do in college, studying different areas, integrating passions yet to be explored. However, what can you do with a liberal arts degree later in life? I probably have to go to grad school if i want to be a biomedical engineer. But what if I only studied biomedical sciences and had already become an expert in during my college. Now we have college graduates with liberal degrees but not specialized in anything areas. Others would argue that liberal arts education teach us how to be a leader, how to learn, and how to deal with life later. I feel like it is not very clear to say it teaches me to learn how to learn. what does it mean? I don't feel any difference. It would be so much easier if I could just get out of college with a D.O degree, taking out fewer loans and start making a career i love.

Boe

Boe seems to emphasize on his identity of being a Lutheran more than on his Norwegian ethnicity. I find this also true when I was doing my research about St. Olaf in the twenties. In Rolvaag chapter, he reiterates  that the great Norwegian heritage is somewhat superior than the rest of the American, and before Boe became president of St. Olaf, Norwegian pride was definitely more dominent in the school. Boe, on the other hand, not an immigrant himself, focused more on the church affiliation to try to unite the student body. He claimed in his letter to Ditmanson that St. Olaf stands for cultural continuity. I find him really pushing the idea of an American identity, which for St. Olaf, a liberal art college, is the mixing of Norwegian and other ethnicity and culture. This question is still pertinent nowadays, particularly to the diversity that has been talked a lot today.      

Ladies and Norwegian

In class Wednesday DeAne told us about the shack dances in the woman dorms in the 1880s. "Although dancing was supposedly forbidden at St. Olaf, evidence of a grand ball in the attic of Ladies' Hall in 1894 has come to light. And the outdoor platform built in 1888 provided a pleasant place and prospects." - Lady's Hall. I think it is interesting that women in the old times were not rule followers- much like college students today. It is not to say obeying the roles is a bad thing to do, but I feel that having this piece of information is crucial to the understand a Ole more than 200 years ago. When I thought about women in that period of time, I thought about women dressing in modest clothing and staying in their room all the time, and the description of the Ladies' Hall pull me closer to the women then. Along with DeAne's essay, on Norwegian religious, political policy and identity, I feel that student life was not just academic itself but with many other important parts to it.

Ántonia, childhood, and land

        Jim’s enduring love for Ántonia represents his nostalgia for the Nebraskan countryside and his childhood. This sentimental longing for the past, confused with affection for Ántonia, guides him to the path of finding his identity. Ántonia epitomizes a fraction of Jim’s identity, signifying “the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of … childhood” (5).  Years spent with her have comforted him in his new life in college and New York with a wealth of memories about the past. For Jim, Ántonia embodies the landscape and Jim’s childhood that he wants to last forever.

        The relationship between Ántonia and is reminiscent of the precious past that colors Jim’s adult life with melancholy. The old days spent in the prairies reflect a concern with his identity and self. To keep the past alive, Jim must romanticize it. He is attracted to her not based on desire but nostalgia towards the Great Plains and his younger self who used to lean his back against a pumpkin, feeling “entirely happy” with his best friend Ántonia (20). Ántonia perceives the childlike aspects in Jim’s adult body that he longs to obtain. His final words in the memoir, “Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past”, implies the memory of the old times they share together. He loves her for what she symbolizes: his childhood that he will never have again.

       Jim also sees Ántonia as the cultivated land. Ántonia belongs to the farm, is the trees, the land, and the wheat she plants. In Jim’s mind, Ántonia appears in the reoccurring image of the prairies and land, where Ántonia works “like a man” (87) Cather employs masculine features to depict Ántonia’s hard work in the fields: “She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as brown as a sailor’s.” (87). Jim, the introverted boy who likes to spend time alone and with girls like Ántonia, does not have the same masculinity. Therefore, Jim has to find his masculinity through her.

          Jim searches for safety in the Nebraska plains because Ántonia’s presence reminds him of the memory in the land. His ambivalence towards growth and maturity makes him feel unsafe and empty when interacting with other women. He then returns to be obsessed with Ántonia, the familiar emotion of home. For example, his encounter with Lena reassures him of his feeling towards Ántonia: “I wish I could have this flattering dream about Ántonia” (169). A beautiful girl with a sheer femininity that is opposite to Ántonia, Lena confronts his sexual desire. Jim describes in his dream:  “I was in a harvest fields full of shocks, and I was lying against one of them. Lena Lingard came across the stubble barefoot, in short skirt, with a curved reaping-hook in her hand...”(168). Lena’s sexual appeal, glowing in her rosy bare flesh, short skirt, and soft kiss, contradicts with the “shocks” and “stubbles” in the barren land that is harvested by the reaping-hook. Ántonia represents the barren land, the background of Lena’s luscious figure, and the land on which Jim always finds a piece of himself. Jim never has a dream like this about Ántonia. He never will be kissing her like Lena, for Ántonia is already in his dream, and always with him as the everlasting farmland in Black Hawk.

          Jim’s childhood replays itself on Cuzak’s boys. Ántonia’s children, they thrive on the land, similar to Jim when he was young. Jim is finally back to Ántonia again after twenty year. Ántonia remains the same old Ántonia, the personified countryside that lures him back. Cather reinforces Ántonia’s fruitful nature as land by delineating the fruit cave:
 
         We turned to leave the cave; Ántonia and I went up the stairs first, and the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they all came running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads and brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight. It made me dizzy for a moment. (249)

Cather uses fruit to symbolize Ántonia’s children, reiterating the analogy between the bounty land and Ántonia herself. A nurturing womb, the fruit cave is brimming with vibrant colors; a fertile woman, Ántonia gave birth to Cuzak’s boys, who have the “veritable explosion of life” that is the rebirth of Ántonia’s spirit. Jim cannot distinguish between Ántonia and her children, for they all are products of the cultivated land.  

           Cather shares Jim’s nostalgia for the mood of the past. My Ántonia represents America in its country, materials, and history. For Jim and Cather, the purpose of time is to return to the beginning. Jim’s stories end in the last paragraph as he finds the first road he traveled with Ántonia “on that night when [they] got off the train at Black Hawk” (272). This road, both literally and metaphorically, returns him to Ántonia, to the country land and his childhood.    
                                   
                                                    Work Cited
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Germany: GGP Media GmbH, Possneck, 1996. Print.
 

A day of life as an ole idea

Today I was researching ideas for this paper and accidentally stubbled upon a list of books with colleges  their major characters have either mentioned or attended. Jay Gasby in Fitzgerald's masterpiece novel the great Gasby stayed briefly at St. Olaf and then dropped out. It sparks my interest about creating Jay Gasby, or James Gatz ( I have not yet decided which name) as my character. He is a English major, bright and poetic, however is kicked out of school because of plagiarism. The date is set on March 10th, 1928, when the economy is suffering. This day could also include a visit from Fitzgerald as a guest speaker/writer and Gasby tries to impress him with an essay he plagiarizes but has no conscious realization of his dishonesty.