Reflective Essay: Brooke Dalton

Coming into Dr. Lunsfords class I was unsure of what to expect. I came into Dr. Lunsfords class from a small predominately Christian town where I was raised with strict Christian values. To me there simply was nothing more than The Word. David Foster Wallace stated in his This Is Water speech, Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Through the many different pieces of literature that we examined this semester I feel that I have learned how to truly think. Dr. Lunsford has introduced me to many different ideas that before this semester I had not stopped to think about. Some of the many ideas we explored this semester include understanding other religions and ways of thinking, the effects of war and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the idea of free will. Being raised in a strict Christian home, I was always taught that the Bible is not just a piece of literature or a work of fiction, but a guide to life. The Bible teaches us that we were made in Gods image and that God placed humans on the earth in order to take care of and rule over the animals and all of the land. One point that the novel Ishmael made that I had never before thought of was the idea of leavers and takers. Ishmael believes that the takers are societies that are industrialized while leavers are more like the animals and societies who are not industrialized. Ishmael believed that humans feel that it is their duty to conquer the earth and to do with it what they please. While I do believe that it is our duty to be the rulers of the earth and to take care of the animals, I do agree with Ishmael that we need to become more frugal. I do still believe that God made us in His image and we are rulers of the earth. I put rulers in quotations because now after reading Ishmael I now feel that maybe what God intended was not

for us to rule but for us to actually take care of His earth. We have become so caught up in taking as much as we can that we no longer see that we are not taking care of the nature that is around us. Another concept that I began to think about was the effects of war on an individual. I feel that war is a concept that is very difficult to fully understand unless you have been directly involved in it. This class has definitely helped me understand a little better through films such as Apocalypse Now and books such as Heart of Darkness and Slaughterhouse-Five. These works show the immoral and unethical nature of war almost as if you were experiencing it first-hand. Although I had heard of the many atrocities of war, there is no way that I could have even possibly imagined just how terrible it is. In Apocalypse now the true immortality and brutality of war was shown in scenes such as the bombing while the school children were leaving school and the woman being gunned down as if she were some type of hunted animal. Until these films I have never fully understood what could be the cause of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and what it was like. These films gave an insight into the world of someone suffering from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder even from the point of the events that were the cause of the PTSD. Although it is not first-hand experience, but quite possibly the closest thing to it, I believe this is what David Foster Wallace was referring to when he said that we should choose how we construct meaning from experience. One of the hardest ideas for me to grasp was the concept of free will in the short story 2BR02B. I believe it was such a hard idea for me to grasp was because the story itself was difficult for me to comprehend. It was so hard for me to imagine a place in which there was no death due to sickness and in order for someone to be born someone must die, because this is nowhere near what I am comfortable with. It is completely out of my norm. Once I realized this

though I realized that there was a much bigger idea here. That idea was what would make someone want to live forever or what would it take for someone to voluntarily end their seemingly perfect life. Another question I had was how much this would actually impact the world. It is questions like this that have truly made me learn to think about things other than the things that I already know and that I am familiar with such as my society, religion, and way of life. David Foster Wallace spoke of us as humans having a default setting. Over the course of the semester I have decided that my default setting is being comfortable in what I know and not exploring other ideas. This semester I have worked really hard to branch out and stray away from my default setting. While I still hold my Christian values and my ideas have not changed completely, I do feel that it is important that I learn about and gain a better understanding of other religions, ideas, and ways of life. Without this course I feel that I may not have realized my default setting and continued about my life not realizing how much more there is.