The Power and the Glory

What I Would Do

Author's Note: as part of out final project for the Power and the Glory we decided to respond to a scenario that causes us to question our morals and ethics. The scenario is a paragraph below this and then my response starts. It is not an essay more of just a piece where I am telling my opinion.

 The Scenario is:

You are sitting in Language Arts class, and the lock down drill goes off. You know this is not a practice. Before anyone could close the door, a creep comes in your classroom. He walks up to you, and holds you at gunpoint. He tells you that if you choose one classmate in the room to be shot and killed, and he will spare you and the rest. If you don't tell him to kill anyone, he will kill you and the rest.

This is a tough scenario to respond to , and probably the hardest thing is the fact that the only right answer is the one that is right to you. I would like to say that I would not single someone out, but then there is a sense of self doubt, I don't know if I would actually be able to do that. In that situation fear may override my morals, the fear of death could cause me to single out someone and it is kind of funny to say that, but that is what I would be a afraid of.

I would not choose someone to be singled out because it devalues human. If I where to choose one person to die, there would be a whole process of deciding who is worthy of life and who isn't. That devalues one human from the next. Whom would I choose, a man with no kids so that I may let a man with kids live. What is the difference between the two of them, they are both human lives, and just because one of the men doesn't have doesn't mean that there aren't other people who look up to him as they would a father.

On a more selfish side of things I wouldn't have to live with the guilt of being the fault of another persons death. I would probably commit suicide and that wouldn't be much different than dieing by the hands of the creep, except of course the fact that I would take others down with me. Being dead without guilt is better than living half a life consumed in guilt. Even though I would technically be at fault for causing the other people to die, at least I am dead and don't have to deal with the guilt.

  My Hero

Author's Note: Here is one of my responses for the Power and the Glory. It is about my hero because in the book, despite all of the priest's flaws he is still a hero. This piece is more personal that what I usually do.

Everybody has a hero, whether it be someone close to them or someone who is a total stranger. For me my hero is someone who is close to me, it is my father. What makes someone a hero to me is someone who is honest with you and helps you make the right decisions, but knows when they need to step back and let you do your own thing. They are someone who holds their beliefs close to their hearts but are not self righteous about them and not only say they believe something but perform that in their actions. 

Over the past year I have watched both my parents struggle, but through all of the work that needs to get done they still make time to help us solve our problems. I love the fact that my dad can cheer me up whenever I am down with the goofy things he says, but he can also talk to me honestly and help me solve problems. I love the fact that he always takes my side when I am fighting with someone that is not in my immediate family. My father is my hero because of who is and not because he has overcome some kind of mighty feat, he is just there for me and no matter how much I might hate him sometimes I still love him.

 Like a Dream

  
Author's Note: here is Thursdays response for Power and the Glory, it is about the part on page 177 where the priest describes Mrs.Lehr as being almost unreal. This is not a piece I feel very confident on, but oh well.

A pleasant practically blissful place is where the priest stays for sometime. Living with a brother and sister by the names of Mr and Mrs Lehr it is as if he is untouchable by any sort of danger and quickly he begins to act like who he formerly was before he was on the run. Eventually though it comes time to move on, and while he is preparing to leave the house of Mr and Mrs Lehr he is approached by the mestizo in prior parts of the book. The mestizo brings news of a dying criminal who would like a confession before he is gone, however going to this dying man will ensure that the priest is in a territory where he can be arrested and killed by the Red Shirts. The priest knows that the mestizo means to lure him into that area and hand him over to the Red Shirts, but he goes anyway. All during this time where the mestizo is explaining the predicament to the priest the priest is observing Mrs.Lehr as she prepares sandwiches, he describes her as a sort of dream like vision. The priest does this because it is almost like his time at the Lehr's is not real, the Lehr's seclude themselves from reality and it is as if they are living in a version of reality where all troubles are removed.

"Her sedated movements had a curious effect of unreality" The priest has been living along side of the Lehr's participating in there safe haze which is called life by them. While he chats with the mestizo it is like he is coming back to reality, coming back to the place where bad things happen, but so do good and you just have to deal with them as they come. There is a scene while the priest is staying with the Lehr's where Mrs.Lehr describes a time where she picked up a newspaper and began to read it, she said it made her feel as if her eyes had been opened and she talked about it as if she was disgusted in that fact. Indeed she kind of was, the newspaper gave her a taste of reality and she didn't like so she receded further into her safe life of nothing. The priest falls into their dream like life and the mestizo wakes him out of his fantasies. 

The Beauty in Suffering

Author's Note: here is my Tuesday post for Power and the Glory. It is based off of a quote on page 130. In this response I am mainly just discussing the meaning of the quote. The last two paragraphs are kind of short, but I felt that if I continued I would just be repeating things, because those paragraphs say all that I need to on the particular subject.

Commonly known as something that pleases the eye or brings comfort and pleasure to the body beauty is so far opposite of funny you can't even argue it, but as the priest in the Power and the Glory says apparently Saints believe that suffering is beauty. While they are in jail the priest is talking to a woman who is very self righteous about her faith, and they begin to discuss beauty. The woman is horrified by acts that are taking place in a corner, but the priest however says they are beautiful, and she scoffs at the fact that beauty could be in a place such as the one they are in. However as the priest counters her verbal attack he states that suffering is beautiful.

"Such a lot of beauty. Saints talk about the beauty of suffering. Well we are not saints you and I. Suffering is just ugly. Stench and crowding and pain." These are the words in which the priest speaks to the woman, he claims that only Saints see beauty in suffering, but Saints where just normal people like you and me who made choices that set them apart from others, and everyone of us has the ability to do what they did.  You can model your how you see anything, change to see the good things or change it to see the bad. Maybe Saints see beauty in suffering because that is what they choose to see.  Suffering is as the priest stated, ugly, there seems as if there is nothing about it that could be beautiful.

The beauty of suffering is that without it we would feel no pleasure, just like if we didn't have pleasure we wouldn't have suffering. If suffering where eliminated from the life we would not know pleasure because we use suffering as a comparison, or an opposite of pleasure.  Without this paradox, life would be nothing, it would be us constantly seeking one of these things. 

The priest has a seemingly endless amount of suffering, and as said in the quote he feels that it is ugly and not beautiful in the least. Suffering is ugly, and it is agony, but it ends eventually. You could say the more suffering you endure the more you treasure those happy moments when pleasure is all that is happening and that is the beauty of suffering.

Family

Author's Note: here is my Tuesday response for the Power and the Glory. It is about how just because you share the same DNA doesn't mean that you are family, this is based off of how the main character feels towards his illegitimate daughter. i am not really sure how much sense it makes and it is kind of harsh, but oh well.

A child who is meeting her father for the first time gazes up at him, the spark of love and contentment she expected is not there, but she can see it in his eyes and it makes her angry. He has no right to be here now, to try and be her father now after all he missed. If she where to see him in the street she would not know that this man was her father, to her he was really just another man, and although they share DNA it does not mean they are necessarily family, because family are people who love you at all costs, are always there for you, the people you know so well that they are the only ones that can annoy you to no end. This man standing before her is none of those, he shares none of those things with her. In the Power and the Glory the main character has an illegitimate daughter for whom he feels an overwhelming protective love although he has only seen her about twice, in the short period he spends with her he tries to turn her into a different person, tries to make a fatherly connection when really he has no right.

"I love you. I am your father and I love you." Says the priest to his daughter who so obviously does not want his love. Never being there for your daughter, never getting to know your daughter does not cut it as far as fatherhood goes, and really you do not even have the right to suddenly decide to start acting like a father to your daughter no matter how short of time. Unless that is what your daughter wants, and then, only then can you build a relationship with her. Just because he is DNA related to the girl does not mean that he is her father, he had the chance to be, and he blew it so she can choose whoever to be her family.

Being DNA related does not mean they are your family, your family can be chosen by you. You could be born into people you hate, so you do not consider them family but people shouldn't go without a family even if that means that your friends are family. Because of this the main character in Power and the Glory does not have the right to come into the girls life expecting her to be in love with him like a sick little puppy dog, just because he is in her bloodline does not mean that she considers him anything close to family.

Martyr

Author's Note: Here is my second response to the Power and the glory. I did it from the perspective of a fourteen year-old boy who is mentioned in the novel. In this boys discussion with his mother about a priest who rather than being shot for his faith, rather than becoming a martyr like the others he chose to go against what he vowed to do and get married. The boy's mother is horrified and disgusted with him and during their conversation about him the boy says "He told me he was more of a martyr than the rest". That struck me as really interesting so I decided to do my response on the boy thinking about that line, and his thought process in figuring it out.  Once again I don't particularly like this piece, but I don't think it is bad enough that I should redo it.

Mother put us to bed early. She said that tomorrow we would need to be energetic for whatever reason, but I think it was really so that she could talk to Father.  I could hear them whispering through the walls as I lay still careful not to disturb my sisters. The quiet drone of my parents and the steady breathing of the children beside me lulls my mind out of this house. I immediately travels back to that conversation not so long ago. I had been talking to Padre Jose, talking about the martyr's when he told me that "he was more of a martyr than the rest". This phrase was curious to me as he did not die for what he believed in, and at the time I ignored, but as I was walking home it bugged me more and more. Until I echoed what he said to Mother, which apparently wasn't a good idea because she kind of sort of yelled at me and now she is talking to Father about it, but I doubt he will care. 

To be a martyr you must die for what you believe just like all of the other priests, but I suppose you could say there is more than one way to die. There is the going to Heaven and Hell kind of dying where you are literally gone from the Earth. Then there is the inside kind of dying where no longer do you feel, your soul is dragging in the dirt and there is no emotion, you are as good as dead. I suppose Padre Jose has to be talking about the latter otherwise it doesn't make sense. 

Dying, for the priests shouldn't have been that bad, after all they would be going to Heaven where there would be eternal life and nothing bad. Oh! Eternal life of course, we can't really call them martyr's because they didn't really die, they passed to a different place but their souls live on eternally whether they went to Heaven or Hell. Poor Padre Jose, because of his choices he is a martyr whether he tried to be on or not, he must consider himself dead from the inside and the others who did end up dying did not die at all rather moving on.  So being  a coward and not willing to "die", he ended up dying anyway whereas the others didn't so they aren't martyrs.

A Name

Author's Note: Here is my response to the Power and the Glory, I kind of hate this because the way I am saying these things sounds kind of childish and I do not provide very much support to it. I am working on making it better right now and I would love suggestions.

 

As a baby your parents named you, named you whatever they thought fit you. As you grew up you began to build a person around that name, giving it meaning. Your name becomes you it, and it is what is used to describe. When it is made fun of you feel like you have been personally violated. In the Power and the Glory the main character has no name, in the first chapter he is referred to as "the stranger", since a name defines who you are this man is lost.A man with no name is a lost man, your name is who you are, and although there maybe other words to describe you the best one is the one that is you, your name. Being without a name symbolizes not knowing who you are, and not knowing who you are is being lost because if you don't know who you are there is not much base to make decisions off of.