TOW #17: Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

            When asking an individual to name one painting they know, most likely than not, Starry Night will be mentioned. As much as Van Gogh’s works are considered masterpieces of this day, the constant glorification of the subject sometimes runs down its magnitude. After having seen Van Gogh’s Starry Night numerous times without giving much thought into it, I’ve encountered an interest in discovering what the meanings behind some of the world’s most famous works of art.

            During his time of existence and career, the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh was not hailed for his artistic techniques, undermining his style and calling it “sloppy, crude and childish.” The critics who were more accustomed to photographic landscapes and portraits of the time did not appreciate the surrealism that Van Gogh emanated. He was therefore isolated from the general public, which his feelings of loneliness could be portrayed through the contrast of dark and light colors of his painting. The big brushstrokes could signify his desire to continue being bold with his style, endeavoring to convince himself that he is more confident than he actually is.

            Although this may be stretching a bit, the eleven stars on Van Gogh’s Starry Night could signify Joseph’s dream of the eleven stars in the Bible. In the biblical account of Joseph, the dreamer, the boy was also isolated from his own family and sold into slavery by the abandonment of eleven of his jealous older brothers. Similar to how Joseph showed constant efforts to receive acceptance from his siblings, Van Gogh also displayed his determined endeavor towards being respected as an artist but had failed to receive recognition of the time period’s art critics.

TOW #16: The Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost

            As I’ve always been a poem fanatic, I am fully aware of the highly regard American poet Robert Frost. Growing up, I’ve enjoyed reading his works from time to time, but as I was still young, I did not fully grasp the meaning behind his words. After fostering the ability to analyze and interpret texts, I believe that I am all the more competent to delve deeper into Frost’s purpose in his short story, “The Death of a Hired Man.” In this work, Frost outlines the themes of duty and hard work.

            The story begins with a husband (Warren) coming home from work. He is immediately greeted by his concerned wife (Mary), notifying him of the return of their ex-farmhand, Silas. Silas, too old and weak to work, came back to fulfill his obligation and duty that he promised to Warren. However, feeling betrayed by Silas multiple times as he (Silas) left Warren during the peaks of harvest, leaving him alone when he needed someone the most. After some time of Mary convincing Warren to be kind and go see Silas of his condition, he discovers that Silas has died.

            In the text, themes of isolation and reputation serves as a backdrop, enhancing the core meaning of Frost’s work. Silas, wanting to make things right, returns to fulfill his contract with Warren before he dies. He seems to want an honorable death, surrounded by those he sees as family. However, although he came back to his “home,” Silas passes away alone. When Warren went to tend to Silas and his condition, he comes back sooner than expected, notifying Mary that Silas had died with one word, “Dead.”

            Despite Silas’s bad reputation, Mary displays kindness, reminding Warren to “Be kind.” Mary serves as a mother-figure, a symbol of love and nurture for anyone regardless of their past experiences or background. In Biblical references, Mary embodies the mother of humanity or Christ, insisting that man must be loved and cared, for he is dying.

The lasting effect of this timeless poem serves to teach the audience of reputation and the effort of relaying kindness to everyone. 

TOW #15: ¡Rape Trump! By Indecline

            During social unrest and political chaos of the 2016 Presidential Election, an explicit depiction of the then-Republican candidate Donald Trump was drawn on one of the Mexican borders, Tijuana; Wedged in his mouth is ball gag, and the words “¡RAPE TRUMP!" are displayed in large, bolded letters. Indecline, a collective of U.S. artists, spray-painted the mural in response to Trump’s speech in June of last year. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best...," Trump said when he kicked off his presidential bid. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." This characterization of Mexican migrants as criminals and rapists is a derogatory generalization of those who may not share the assumed background. The Tijuana mural also includes directions to Trump Tower in New York City from the original location. It can be perceived as an offering to potential Mexican immigrants to fit into the description said by Trump to challenge his assumption.

TOW #14: The Son of Man by René Magritte

            Drawn by the same Belgian painter as “Man in the Bowler Hat,” the surreal 1964 painting “The Son of Man” was painted by René Magritte as a self-portrait. The scenery illustrates a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat standing in front of a short wall. Behind this wall depicts a cloudy sky and a horizon of a sea. The most curious aspect of this artwork is the hovering green apple in front of the man’s face, making his identity unknown. I’ve seen this painting in many social media platforms as part of a parody, featuring the same unidentified man (Magritte) and his face covered by inquisitive items. The mysterious aura this painting emanates was the element that sparked my initiative to delve further into the hidden meanings behind Magritte’s portrait.

            When asked about the message behind his decision to obscure the face of his self-portrait, Magritte responded, “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden behind what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us.” Although his reasoning was relatively oblique and could be ambiguous in regards to how the public interprets his words, I could definitely understand Magritte’s attempt at drawing contrast between “the visible that is present and the visible that is hidden.” Maybe Magritte was fully aware of the human tendency to decipher meaning from essentially anything that aren’t direct in an attempt to better understand the person behind the work. His purposeful addition of a compelling factor of the green apple accentuates his depiction of conflict between what is seen and unseen.

TOW #13: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

            Finishing the second half of When Breath Becomes Air was like completing a large project. I didn’t know what to spend my time with now. This book had consumed majority of my time although every minute that I invested was worth it. Kalanithi’s ability to display his most intimate and personal emotions into the pages was viewed highly by not only myself but also by many in the reading community. As he is a doctor, he is exposed to countless of individuals with similar cases as his. His exclusive perspective into the doctor who slowly degrades into a weak patient was an extremely intriguing foundation of his memoir.

            Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon who, due to his sudden diagnosis of lung cancer towards the end of his seven-year residency, began to shift into the position of a patient whom he had treated all his life. With this disease, he began to see his gradual transition from “doctor to patient, from actor to acted upon, from subject to direct object” (Kalanithi 180). He recalls his experience as a medical student, knowing nothing and often end up asking patients to explain their disease and treatments to him, but as he grew more experienced as a doctor, he never expected patients to make decisions themselves since he bore responsibility for the patient. And through his sickening body, he only now realized that he “was trying to do the same thing now, [his] doctor-self remaining responsible for [his] patient-self” (Kalanithi 182-183). His various viewpoints in the perspective of various roles that he played in the course of his lifetime aided in a book with a great amount of substance, giving a peek into the scenarios he found himself in. When he was taken off a drug that he shouldn’t have been, he consulted a young medical student about it. However, the inexperienced student began arguing with him, as he “could see that in Brad’s eyes I was not a patient, I was a problem: a box to be checked off” (Kalanithi 187). This is a specific example in which he got an insight into the minds of his fellow hospital mates and how they treat their patients as they got more and more experienced. Giving these various perspectives allowed Kalanithi to appeal to his audience, giving insight into the medical world that many do not know.

TOW #12: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

            When I was finished with Carson’s Silent Spring, I felt drawn towards a nonfiction book with more of a storyline rather than the previous book’s evidence-driven layout. After surfing on the almighty Google search-engine, I encountered a book that had recently released in January of this year. In short, Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir focused around his diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. At the young age of thirty-six with his ten years of neurosurgeon training almost at its completion and his wife pregnant with their first child, Kalanithi describes his journey of transitioning from a doctor to a patient holding onto his last breath. The book is divided into two chapters which symbolizes the “before and after” of his life after learning about his diagnosis. Although I’ve read only the first half of this memoir, I am completely absorbed in the story.

            Throughout Kalanithi’s recount of his personal life and events, he interweaves life lessons that he had learned from his experience in the medical field as a neurosurgeon. One lesson that had the greatest lasting impact on me was to follow my path. Although he had been meaning to pursue a career in literature in the future, Kalanithi decided to stray away from his undergraduate degree in literature at Stanford and graduate degree in philosophy at Cambridge to answer his “calling” in medicine. This was when he was studying the work of Walt Whitman for his thesis. After this assignment, Kalanithi realized that he was becoming “increasingly certain that [he] had little desire to continue in literary studies, whose main preoccupations had begun to strike [him] as overly political and averse to science” (40). Because of this sudden revelation, he became aware that “[he] didn’t quite fit in an English Department” (41). Although his decision meant that he had to set aside literature, he was satisfied with the idea that it would “allow [him] a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay” (42).

            Kalanithi’s late response to his true passion encouraged me to believe that my own “calling” will not arrive according to my will. This idea relieved me as I came to realize that I had been stressing about my impending future and my potential career. Instead of unnecessarily preoccupying my time into forging a “perfect” future, I decided to just let my curiosity lead me to wherever it may wish.

TOW #11: Ain't I A Woman by Sojourner Truth

            The first time I came across this monumental speech was when I was online shopping a couple of years ago, searching for a plain graphic tee. As I was scrolling the page of a shop that I’ve found myself revisiting countless times, I was confronted by a hit-you-in-the-face yellow shirt with an unrecognizable (at the time) quote that read, “Ain’t I A Woman?” Of course I had to buy it as I loved the rhetoric. Little Bo, as curious as she could be, had to know where this saying originated, and with a little research (quick search on Google), I doused myself in the short yet poignant delivery of words that still affects me today. As I have never really delved deeper into the meaning behind Truth’s purpose nor have I considered Truth’s audience, I was ecstatic when I was assigned her text to analyze.

            Sojourner Truth had delivered her speech to the Women’s Convention as she addressed her primarily female audience about the inequalities that both women and African Americans faced during the time period when slavery was prevalent. In order to make aware of the wrongs of gender inequality, Truth utilizes personal experiences and repetition of rhetorical questions. When a man claims that “women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and have the best place everywhere,” Truth juxtaposes his ignorant declaration by exclaiming that no one has ever performed these chivalrous manners for her, saying, “nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me the best place!” As a subject of both minority being a black woman, Truth establishes her credibility by recounting her own experience in discrimination.

            As Truth spoke with anger and resentment, she repeated the increasingly impactful phrase, “and ain’t I a woman?” As I’ve mentioned before, this speech was delivered to the Women’s Convention, an event in which the audience were predominantly female. Taking this into account, she brought the rhythm of the repetition to a close with an explicit account of her life: “I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?” By purposely ending this section with a lasting impression of her position as an African American woman in the midst of slavery, Truth was successful in relaying the immoral wrongs of inequality. As her audience were probably mothers with their own loving children, Truth allowed her audience to relate with her on a personal and emotional level.