Dichotomies

“Last Stop: Chicago Union Station” As the annoyingly familiar woman announced her daily sermon of train stops, I incorporated the dissonant melodies of the outside world with the orderly ones of Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra”. But it would most likely be known to those crowded around me as the famous introduction to 2001: A Space Odyssey. My ritualistic walk to the Chicago Fine Arts Building for rehearsal began as my violin clanged against my back. The songs of those wearing suits…

designation was ISTJ, which meant I was a quiet, practical, goal oriented person that take pleasure in being orderly and organized in every aspect of my life. The majority of the findings were as expected, I had slight to moderate preferences for each dichotomy. Though I fall into a set MBTI type, I tend to switch between types depending on my environment. My designated personality preferences play specific roles in how I approach the HSA program. In a class or group setting my preference for…

decline in performance. When they questioned my mental health, I was jolted out of my daze of indifference. I expected myself to always be competitive and driven, yet longed to be grounded in contentment, not an emotional turmoil. Living with this dichotomy was a…

anthropology professor at Stanford University (736). Sally McConnell-Ginet is an emeritus linguistics professor at Cornell (736). They argue children learn gender by a certain age, and they assert that American culture is deeply rooted in the gender dichotomy in “Learning to Be Gendered”. We are born biologically male or female; that 's what our chromosomes say. Whether they are XX or XY we are born that way. However, biological sex and gender are different. Gender identity is something that a…

One of the first pieces of African American fiction is James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Published anonymously in 1912, and again in 1927, it follows the life of a Black man who is able to pass for white. Although formatted as an autobiography, this work is a fiction novel that was popular among the white and black middle classes of America when it was published. This text explores topics such as social status, appropriation and assimilation, interracial…

Employing the simile of clearing away of a city’s dirty water as it meets a majestic river like the Ganges, this verse maintains that a sinner attains purity, in the same manner, through unwavering and steadfast adherence to the True Religion. The term khāḍā-khābochiyā(n), as a compound word or two separate words, khāḍā and khābochiyā(n), refer to ditches and puddles of water or pit pools. In the context of this verse, khāḍā-khābochiyā(n) refers to wastewater and sewage. Thus, the first two…

with what is morally upright or good (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Martin Luther King in “Letters from Birmingham Jail” apply biblical allusion, ethos, and pathos to argue for just laws. But in his optimistic view of humans and in setting up the dichotomy of just and unjust laws, is he neglect the nature of human beings? One-way…

Charles Brockden Brown’s gothic novel, Wieland, or The Transformation, divulges into the ambiguity through the first person narration of Clara, and her inability to decipher between reality and superstition. Throughout the haunting novel, Clara finds herself endlessly questioning the strange events that pierce her and her family’s lives, unable to trust her own skepticism and to find any definite answers. Scholar, Christine Hedlin, observes Clara’s narration in her essay entitled “Was There Not…

The question of what happens when and after we die is surrounded by ambiguities and uncertainty because no mode of logic or wisdom could possibly extend to such a question. Nonetheless, in Plato’s Phaedo, the character Socrates comes to grips with his death by exploring what death is and why he isn’t afraid to face it. Phaedo begins from Phaedo’s perspective as he tells his fellow philosophers his (and several other companions’) trip to visit Socrates in his cell before his execution. While…

When I first read the selections from Zitkala-Sa’s “Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” and “An Indian Teacher Among Indians,” her figurative prose struck me as very specific and intentional, so much so that I could not help but wonder how much of her constructed narrative was autobiographical fact. In her critical essay “Troping in Zitkala-Sa’s Autobiographical Writings,” Roumiana Velikova argues, firstly, that Zitkala-Sa intentionally chooses to obscure…