Kakos' 6th Hour

Reactions and comments from my sixth hour Honors American Literature class.

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Thursday, September 14, 2006

Individual Villainy

"When one rises above the individual villainy displayed, one can only pity them all, just as we shall be pitied someday. It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without repressions, and the balance has yet to be struck between order and freedom" (Miller 7).

Do you, like Miller, pity the people of late 17th century Salem? Do you think that we will be pitied one day? Do agree that repression is an inherent part of organized social life?

6 Comments:

Blogger Hannah S said...

I do pity the people of Salem because they are going through a hard time and don't understand what is happening. It is sad that they had to come up with an answer and work with what they had to try to fix. However, I do not pity them because killing people should not have been the answer to their problems.

1:54 PM  
Blogger Tori S said...

Yes I do pity the people of 17th century Salem up to a point. So many people were accused with intangible evidence and so many were executed yet nobody really took a stand against this. It seems like more than maybe one or two people should have had the guts to speak out against what was going on. Although if everyone in the town really did believe that there were witches than I pity them more. Believing in this mass hysteria would have been easy and everyone could have seen it as very real.

1:55 PM  
Blogger Thomas_N said...

I do not pity the people of Salem in the 17th century. This is because all generations of people go through repressions and hard times it is just a part of life. Instead of pity for them people should learn from their mistakes and hardships to make progress for themselves. I don't think that we should be pitied in the future but there will be someone who does. Even though there are no real hardships for us in the future when life will be made even easier people will wonder how we lived such a "hard" life. From our current conditions we would think that the people of Salem went through a lot but if we were in their shoes we would probably instead be feeling pity for some earlier occurrence in history.

1:56 PM  
Blogger KristinC said...

It has always been apart of civilizations to make advances and as technology becomes standard people adjust and are under the impression that it is necessary. Our generation cannot imagine a world without computers and the internet because it has become a standard part of our lives. Likewise our children might think it completely normal to have flying cars or something that we could not possibly imagine. It is simply the cycle of civilization.

2:01 PM  
Blogger Dan said...

The people of Salem in the 17th century should be pitied, not because of their their decisions, but like Miller said, because they were ignorant. Every future generation will pity the past because to them, the past is naive and still learning their mistakes. We can go back to every event in the past and pity the leaders whom struggled.

Repression is always an inherent part in the society we live in. We can compare the economy with this idea. There are always peak points and struggles, but we always improve.

2:01 PM  
Blogger Lisa Madsen Crellin said...

When I first read this quote yesterday, the line that states we might one day be pitied stood out to me quite strongly. Although today we agree to have the most elite and superior technology, it will continue to be improved upon and in future years this era may quite likely be pitied whether on the basis of knowledge, organization, technology, etc. However, based on circumstance, we have grown to both pity and envy those from past generations. Many today, myself included, pity those who dealt with the Puritan dominated culture that was present in Salem during the late 1600’s. To live in an environment where religion, practices, beliefs and opinions of individuals are questioned would be a very difficult society to develop in. Growing up with a religious mold would be both unconstructive as well as corroding to one’s ability to expand and agree with individual beliefs and ideas.
Dealing with the third aspect of the question, I strongly agree that repression is a major part of social life as we all simply lack the self confidence and boldness to be different than what is expected socially. In an organized social life, motives for our actions are constantly questioned and when such motives disagree with certain social ideals, we as individuals become “outcasts” or individuals of little acceptance.

2:02 PM  

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