Journal 1/20

Throughout this week I began my reading of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court” by Mark Twain. In the beginning I found it a bit challenging to get used to the way that Twain wrote and I found myself reading a whole page and having to go back and re read it to figure out what was really going on. As the book progresses though, I find that it is easier to read and keep up with.

I really found Thursday’s class to be very interesting. I enjoyed picking a time period in which I would like to live in and one in which I dreaded. For the time period that I dread, I chose the Holocaust. I chose that time mainly because it was a time of great distress and terrible things were happening while innocent lives were being taken.

When describing my role in that time period. I said that I would want to be a person who lives really far away from Germany during that time because I wanted nothing to do with what was going on in that country. At first I felt that I was being a little selfish and sheltered because I would just be avoiding the problem and watching like a bystander; although, as we opened up to discussion I felt differently. We talked about how this was a very narcissistic exercise. Most people wanted to go back in time and be in a position of power, or be a person that survived the terrible things and were able to come out on the other side stronger. It just got me to thinking that, in an ideal world, we all really want the same things mostly. We want to have power, and be safe and be free of the terrible things that are going on in the society at that time. Now there is nothing wrong with that, but I think its very telling of how humans and the human brain works.