Bluejay
03-22-2008, 03:41 PM
Hi, I'm new here, and I'm so glad I've found this forum. I've been looking for a respectable literature website for some time now. I was hoping to get some critique for something I've just written for a literary magazine. This has been drastically revised due to a teacher's comments on how there should be more symbolism. I'd love to get even more comments on how to improve this. Please take into consideration that I have only begun to write serious literature and have very little experience in the writing world. -Thanks
I find beauty in the graffiti of the ghettos. I know inspiration when I stare into the eyes of poverty. I bathe in sensuality at the site of patterns colliding like trains on the same track. I feel rejuvenation in the crumbling, moldering bricks. It is raw; it is cutting edge.
Here I stand, a suburbanite—not quite wealthy, but middle-class. Without having to work, I have been given much of what I need in order to survive in this world. I feel that such is the case for many people basking in the social gift of suburban life.
In having been granted undeserved blessings, I feel as though the middle-class of the world has been deprived the right to suffer for its possessions. For it is in suffering that maturity is reached. It is in tolling times that strength sprouts from the cracks of concrete. It is in difficulties that one learns to deal with his or her predicaments.
I am entitled to perceive the smooth skin on an adolescent’s pregnant stomach as magnificent. My seeing splendor in the facial wrinkles of a homeless man or woman is justified. My vision of glory within a life controlled by domestic violence is not a mere illusion. These victims will struggle. Yet, if they do not die, they will learn. They will toughen. Perhaps, they will become wiser people. They will develop in their wisdom. They will ripen as individuals.
The suburban man has not come face-to-face with the world’s nit and grit. Thus, he has not learned how to cope with his troubles. He handles his tribulations through the bliss of ignorance. The man imprisons himself in a search for comfort. He finds contentment in conformity. Conformity is in turn the polar opposite of the individuality that results from wisdom—wisdom to see that self-fulfillment is found by rising above social norms and finding oneself by solving one’s quandaries. It is a wisdom gained only from dealing with the most distressing of dilemmas.
The call for conventionality seeks to choke away at the flowers of independent thought, because independent thought calls for seeing life in a way that does not always please the suburban man. The new way of considering the world shows him his ignorance. The new way shows him his unwillingness to struggle and to work towards true understanding of himself and of his universe, however difficult such a task might be. The new way calls for him to depart from the traditional way in which the suburban man submerges himself in the concrete of material goods to escape the often difficult truths.
I also see beauty in this imprisonment of unique thought. I see wonder in this incapability of the suburbanite to deal with his concerns. I marvel at the lovely tragedy of his inability to understand his feelings of emptiness which come from an absence of personal maturity.
Though the ghetto offers an opportunity to improve from physical deprivation, the suburbs offer a growth from a spiritual deprivation. The suburbs offer a chance to grow from an environment that seeks to suppress suffering—suffering that looks for a harder to reach but an altogether more gratifying outlook. Such hardship can be found in the struggle to emerge from such a stifling setting. Those who want to see the world even at its worst will be a step closer to seeing a beauty in life’s most terrifying aspects. For it is in facing those horrifying adversities that we are strengthened as individuals. It is but the strongest seeds of human resilience that blossom out of the narrow crevices of gravel.
I find beauty in the graffiti of the ghettos. I know inspiration when I stare into the eyes of poverty. I bathe in sensuality at the site of patterns colliding like trains on the same track. I feel rejuvenation in the crumbling, moldering bricks. It is raw; it is cutting edge.
Here I stand, a suburbanite—not quite wealthy, but middle-class. Without having to work, I have been given much of what I need in order to survive in this world. I feel that such is the case for many people basking in the social gift of suburban life.
In having been granted undeserved blessings, I feel as though the middle-class of the world has been deprived the right to suffer for its possessions. For it is in suffering that maturity is reached. It is in tolling times that strength sprouts from the cracks of concrete. It is in difficulties that one learns to deal with his or her predicaments.
I am entitled to perceive the smooth skin on an adolescent’s pregnant stomach as magnificent. My seeing splendor in the facial wrinkles of a homeless man or woman is justified. My vision of glory within a life controlled by domestic violence is not a mere illusion. These victims will struggle. Yet, if they do not die, they will learn. They will toughen. Perhaps, they will become wiser people. They will develop in their wisdom. They will ripen as individuals.
The suburban man has not come face-to-face with the world’s nit and grit. Thus, he has not learned how to cope with his troubles. He handles his tribulations through the bliss of ignorance. The man imprisons himself in a search for comfort. He finds contentment in conformity. Conformity is in turn the polar opposite of the individuality that results from wisdom—wisdom to see that self-fulfillment is found by rising above social norms and finding oneself by solving one’s quandaries. It is a wisdom gained only from dealing with the most distressing of dilemmas.
The call for conventionality seeks to choke away at the flowers of independent thought, because independent thought calls for seeing life in a way that does not always please the suburban man. The new way of considering the world shows him his ignorance. The new way shows him his unwillingness to struggle and to work towards true understanding of himself and of his universe, however difficult such a task might be. The new way calls for him to depart from the traditional way in which the suburban man submerges himself in the concrete of material goods to escape the often difficult truths.
I also see beauty in this imprisonment of unique thought. I see wonder in this incapability of the suburbanite to deal with his concerns. I marvel at the lovely tragedy of his inability to understand his feelings of emptiness which come from an absence of personal maturity.
Though the ghetto offers an opportunity to improve from physical deprivation, the suburbs offer a growth from a spiritual deprivation. The suburbs offer a chance to grow from an environment that seeks to suppress suffering—suffering that looks for a harder to reach but an altogether more gratifying outlook. Such hardship can be found in the struggle to emerge from such a stifling setting. Those who want to see the world even at its worst will be a step closer to seeing a beauty in life’s most terrifying aspects. For it is in facing those horrifying adversities that we are strengthened as individuals. It is but the strongest seeds of human resilience that blossom out of the narrow crevices of gravel.