A Letter to My Blue Blanket

Dear Blanket,

You have been with me for more than ten years. I remember my mom buying you in the States; I was five years old then. You were blue, you were butterfly-ish, you were flowery, and you were a soft new blanket. I really loved your softness, which was slightly different from that of other blankets. You covered me both in summer and winter because I loved you so much. Then I brought you from the States and moved you inside the hectic and heterogeneous school, KMLA.

You have been my cheering and consoling companion in KMLA. The hectic tick-tocking of KMLA schedule, as it did to everyone else, often drained out my energy. When I listened to a lecture in my 1^st study period and spent the 2^nd study period for club activity and then returned to my room, you always gladly greeted me and covered me with your soft, blue body. I became a long, blue caterpillar after you covered me. Your butterfly patches softly hugged me as would a mother hug her daughter. You truly restored my energy whenever I felt exhausted. Without you, I would have felt very hard to continue my study in this busy school.

You have been my shell of self-regard during most of my KMLA years. I found out that KMLA is a very heterogeneous school, with many students having different characters and different abilities. I often felt a sense of inferiority by comparing myself to other students. Sometimes other students seemed perfect and I seemed to be very inferior. Whenever I was depressed by such feeling, you called me with your sweet voice and covered me with your soft fabric. You told me to not compare myself to totally different others and to focus on my abilities. Your flowery patches ensured me a flowery future; inside your soft touch, I was imagining me fully realizing my abilities.

Nowadays, I feel that I am growing. I feel uncomfortable when I am a blue caterpillar, when I am covered with your soft fabric. The caterpillar skin was once very comfortable and consoling, but I feel too big to be confined inside the blue caterpillar. I feel that I should become a cocoon instead of a caterpillar, and turn into a butterfly, just like your butterfly patch. I came to realize that the flowery future you provided was an imagination and that I should turn into a butterfly to make the flowery imagination a reality.

Thank you for being my consoling companion. Thank you for protecting me from my self-destroying sense of inferiority. Thank you for being my butterfly-patched mother. Thank you for providing me an image of a flowery future. But I know that I cannot remain a blue caterpillar forever. I must grow up. Maybe now is the time to say good-bye.

Good bye, my old friend, my butterfly, my blue blanket.

Sincerely,

Na Yeon Kim

The Nature of Deception Manifest in "Tales of the Unexpected"

As the title Tales of the Unexpected suggests, the short stories inside this book contain a variety of turning points. Sometimes the turning points provide a plausible explanation to a seemingly mysterious chain of events, as in “Taste” and “Skin.” In other stories, the turning points expose the hidden part of the individual, as in “Man from the South,” when it is revealed that the woman engaged in multiple bets. Among these turning points, those which provide an understandable explanation to mysterious, even bizarre events, effectively portray the human nature of deception: humans often deceive others because they do not want real risk.

In the story “Taste,” a connoisseur called Richard Pratt participates in a seemingly absurd bet. Based on his numerous experiences on tasting and evaluating food and drink, he strongly insists that he can figure out the name of the wine served at a dinner. He proposes a bizarre bet: if he exactly figures out the name of the wine, he would marry the daughter of the dinner host. The dinner host, Mike Schofield, says that this bet is absurd, but reluctantly participates in the bet. Although Pratt pretends to concentrate in figuring out its name, in the end of the story it is revealed that Pratt already saw the name of the wine. Moreover, in the story “Skin,” Drioli has a tattoo on his back drawn by a famous artist, Soutine. Because the tattoo is an early work of a well-known artist, many people wants to have it, and a man states that he would give Drioli immense wealth and pleasure if Drioli gives him the picture. However, the man was actually incapable of giving Drioli the promised gift. The two stories have similar endings which remarkably reveal the deception of characters.

Such deception enables the characters to participate in a safe bet, which ensures that they would get what they want. As a result, the characters have a strong motivation to engage in deception. This ending shows that humans deceive others for the sake of their safe, 100% sure advantage. Moreover, the placement of the “revelation” of deception reflects another characteristic of human deception. The revelation is always placed at the end of the story, which provides an unexpected turning point. Such placement could be done for the sake of providing a twist, but this very placement exactly reflects deception in real life. Every liar hopes that his deception would not be disclosed forever because the liar worries that he would be in trouble when his lie is exposed. Even though the deception is revealed, it is always revealed in the end. Therefore, the “unexpected” twist in the end of the story resembles the predictable pattern of disclosing a real-life deception, and further reveals the desire for safety behind deception.

When a person deceives others, he is hiding two things: the reality and the fact that he is lying. The characters of “Taste” and “Skin” lies, respectively, that he has an extraordinary ability to figure out the name of a wine and he can provide wealth and comfort in compensation of a skin tattoo. These characters conceal the reality, that he has no ability to magically figure out the name of any wine and that he has no ability to provide wealth and pleasure, to certainly gain what they desire. Moreover, they hide the fact that they lie, a behavior represented in the placement of the revelation of deception, because they want to be safe from the troubles associated with their lies being exposed. Therefore, through his deceptive characters, Roald Dahl shows that deception is a result of the desire for safety.

Form a "claim" about The Picture of Dorian Gray

At first glance, Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" might appear as a novel written to tell a moral lesson by showing the devastating result of unrestrained aestheticism. After all, when the readers consider the ending of the novel, they can easily recognize that Oscar Wilde thought Dorian's decadent deeds to be self-destroying. This claim becomes more persuasive when the readers consider the background of the novel. Many of Wilde's contemporaries thought that British society was experiencing moral decline, and they sought to restore morality of British society. However, Lord Henry, who is heavily responsible for corrupting Dorian, does not receive any punishment. Moreover, in the preface of the novel, Wilde states that "there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book." This statement clearly shows that "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was not written to serve a purely moral purpose. Instead, Wilde states in the preface that "books are well written, or badly written." Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to assume that Wilde wrote this novel just to write a well written novel. In this sense, the moral lessons of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" are only tools for a beautiful novel.