Dear Tybalt

Dear Tybalt,

I am writing to you to advise you to not try to initiate a fight with Romeo Montague. No good will come from a fight. You must let go of your anger for him and his friends about coming to the capulet houses party as your uncle, Capulet did. If you fight Romeo, it won't just be a fight between you two but the beginning of a war between the Montages and Capulets

Firstly, if you were to fight Romeo only more Montague and Capulet blood will be spilled, worsening the already strained peace between the two feuding families. You aren't just risking yourself and Romeo. Think of your cousin, Juliet and what might become of her in the future if she were to be thrown in the middle of this violence or what it would do to her if she were to lose someone she loved dearly.

Secondly, not only the Montague and Capulet families are in danger if you initiate a fight with Romeo. Friends of both families and bystanders who never had any bad blood with the Capulet family are also in danger of the fight between your families. The same goes for the servingmen of both families, who are trying to show pride of the family they serve.

This will not just be a fight between you and Romeo but a war between both of your families. It may help to salvage your personal pride and dignity but at what cost? The prince is already holding your family and the Montagues on thin ice for your last fight. Don't sacrifice the civil blood of your family for a petty duel, prove the Capulet family better by being more dignified without the violence, but rather with maturity and wisdom. You may save yourself and your family a lot of loss, heartache, bloodshed and conflict. 

Don't do something you will regret.

Sincerely, 

 Stella Lowery

The Shining

During our book club, my book club and I read "The Shining". Steven Kings novel, "The Shining" is about the Torrence's peculiar experiences after they find themselves at the famous Overlook hotel over the lonely winter months. Jack, going to the hotel to manage it over the winter months and work on his writing finds himself falling into his past drinking problem and violent tendencies and trying to kill his wife Wendy, and son Danny who only narrowly escape the clutches of the hotel and Jack. In this book we found several occurances of symbolism, for example one symbol of the book was a hornet's nest that Jack found when maintaining the hotel that was interrupted to symbolize Jack's relationship with his son Danny and the family car that symbolized the Torrence's old life, which both acted to bring more depth to simple objects in the book and the plot.

In the book, when Jack found the hornets nest he immediately thought of the nest his own (abusive) father had once given him when he was a  young boy. Thinking it was empty he gave it to his own son Danny, hoping to restore the relationship he had had with the boy before he had accidentally broken his arm when he was three. Danny who had accepted the gift from his father lovingly, was accidentally stung by hornets Jack had unintentionally left inside the nest. This, had also accurately represented Jack and Danny's relationship. Jack had attempted to do something to bond but the only thing that he could use to connect with Danny was bring the same pain that Jack had also felt from his own father.

Another symbol, is the family car, that represents the family's old life, before the Overlook. On the way to the Overlook the Torrence's were transitioning into their new life and as they drove to their new temporary home, their car was dying which symbolized the end of their old life at their home and the rise of their new life at the Overlook. It was like the death of the past and birth of the future for their family. Also at the Overlook they had to leave behind their car and their old life and upgrade to a new snowplow(ish kind of car) so they could make minimal trips at the Overlook that represented their new lifestyle at the Overlook and their home

All of these simple objects held so much more meaning and depth to the characters and the plot, giving their actions and effects more meaning, that also spoke more deeply of the plot and character relationships.

Kick Ass Historical Ladies

Although the Greek and Roman empires are thought of as something of the past, many of their ideas and principles that they lived by are actually very forward thinking and modern. Especially their views on woman's roles and what they could and couldn't do in religion and mythology, from the goddesses and ancient heroes to the ancient Roman and Greek villains.

For example, the Greek goddess Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war strategy, which has stereo-typically been categorized as a role only capable of a man, who are apparently the only people capable of reason, wisdom and strength. Also Athena was a goddess born from brandishing a spear and shield. Also Athena what was known as a "maiden goddess", meaning she would never marry, which in the eyes of most of most empowered maidens was seen as being roped in by her husband. This figure is iconic after in later times, woman were seen as expected to marry, and hardly ever got the education that men received, nonetheless seen as wise and smart.

In addition, the goddess Artemis in Greek form, or Diana in Roman, goddess of the hunt and bow (and moon), also was an empowering female figure. Not only the goddess of the hunt and bow, but she devoted herself to the eternal hunt and also was a "maiden goddess". She never wed, and didn't like to have men in her presence at all, only allowing other maidens to attend her hunt. Not only was she a huntress, which is also stereo-typically seen as something very manly, but she also expelled men from her life as well as her immortalized companions.

Also, Artemis's companions were empowering in their own way as well. They vowed to expel men from their lives in return for immortality and the chance to hunt alongside Artemis.

In addition, Nike in Greek form and Victorious (or was it Victoria?) in Roman, the goddess of victory and winning was a iconic and empowering character. She too was a woman in the role of something often seen as being played by a more masculine character. 

Also, the Amazons, a group of female fighters much like the Hunters of Atremis were iconic female figures. They too chose to also reject male influences just like the huntresses. Not only was it impressive that it was said these groups existed but also that they were respected by women and men. 

Lastly, Bellona a Roman goddess much like Athena was a strong female icon during this time. And much like Athena she too played the role most felt should be filled by a man. 

For years unfair stereotypes have set woman as only loving, compassionate and motherly always seeking emotion and expression, but as it turns out even before that woman have been seen as wise, strong and skillful fighters who fight the characteristics of what we still stereotype as many traits and roles

Limits of Love

What do you do if you love someone but they don't love you back? What if someone you love only wants to be friends? Do you stick around only as their friend even if it leaves you in a constant pain? In the Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare several characters are confronted with this question, when you love someone, but they don't love you back is it better for you to have them in your life only as a friend? Or not at all? Saving yourself the pain of constantly confronting the person who could never love you back?

For example Luke has to ask himself this question. He confronted his best friend Jocelyn with his love for her, 20 years ago and she shot him down, assuming he was only doing it out of friendship and courtesy rather then his real feelings. Because of that first encounter she figured he never has loved her, and always shot down his feelings after. But Luke still remained friends with her because it was what she wanted and he still wanted to make her happy. But was this the right thing to do? Luke was left in a constant pain even though he was making the person he loved happy? You would think that by making the person he loved happy it would make him happy too but it only made him feel worse because he was only inflicting more pain on himself.

Also, Simon is going through a similar situation. He has been in love with his best friend Clary, for years, and everyone knew but her. The first time he confronted her she did not return the same feelings. But his feelings didn't change, he still loved her and didn't even try to push her, or make her love him because she was still in his life and that was enough. Even if she didn't or couldn't love him she was still there and to him that was enough. But he always assumed she would later come around and eventually love him, it was what every one else assumed of her. But he was just to hang around till she learned this? To just wait for a girl there was no guarantee would learn to love him? Does this mean he truly loved her or did it mean that he lacked self respect and could stand up for him self and call off the relationship he knew would never really happen?

Lastly Jace and Clary both have to ask themselves this question throughout the series. When they find out that they are related they put an end to their relationship but decide to remain friends and have each other in the others lives even only as friends versus not at all.When they see each other they are the thing that makes the other weaker, but is also the remedy, the problem is the same thing that is the solution. They could have left each other alone from the beginning and saved themselves from a never ending circuit of pain that's only solution will start the problem all over again. They claim to need each other to survive but that's only to survive, to live they need to be alone. Is this deep love or an unhealthy obsession from both sides? Maybe sometimes the best way to love, in a way that will last for eternity is to love yourself and to put yourself first.

All of these characters held out for the people they love and eventually they were rewarded for holding out and staying loyal. But what if they didn't find their happily ever after? What if they all spent there lives waiting for the person that they could never have living in a horrendous, self inflicting, pain? We all want to makes our loved ones, the ones we love most, happy. But when we make them happy but not ourselves when do yeasty and when do you leave? Is it selfless to stay? Or is it selfish to leave?

Edgar Allen Poe

After finishing several Edgar Allen Poe stories I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. Why was it always about a man who would go mad? And then why did he result his madness in violence and slaughter? I knew a lot of things about Poe due to my gruesome fascination with him since the age of six but to me Poe's greatest mystery remains himself. In one story he writes of a man who looses his mind  and kills an old man with the defense that the old man's eye was haunting him, and then hides the body in the floor of the old man's home. And in another story he writes of a younger man who takes in a black cat, and in a violence rage blinds the cat in one eye. Later the man again believes the eye is haunting him and kills the cat and hides it in the basement walls. My first thought was "whats this guys deal with eyes?" and "why does he kill things and bury the bodies in houses? whats wrong with a with like not burying bodies in your house? Does he want to be haunted or something?". But then I began to see the reoccurring situations in these two stories: the eyes, the madness, the murder and then the covering of the murders. What was the significance of these things? What message was Poe trying to get across to the reader? Poe once said "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity," was his writing his way of expresses his madness with no physical violence? Was he voicing his own life experiences through reoccurring things in his story? But if it was madness he wanted to seek out why didn't he just look into his own life. I mean he married his 12 year old first cousin when he was 24. Is that not creepy enough for him? And those weren't the only abnormal aspects in his life there were so. Many. More. In Poe's journey to make and create mysteries the greatest mystery he made was himself.

Love Makes Us Liars

Have you ever lied about how you felt about someone, whether to protect yourself or someone else? Or have you ever lied to someone you love to protect yourself or someone else? We all tell lies, whether big, detrimental, ones or small little ones, honest motives or not, we still lie for and to the people we love. You could even say love is what makes people, good or bad, whether a liar already or not, tell lies.

In the "Mortal Instruments" by Cassandra Clare 16-year-old protagonist, Clary Fray, finds out she is really, Clary Morgenstern, a Nephilim. Throughout the series Clary is trying to find out who she is and who her family is. Along her journey there is lots of love and different relationships, all having there own struggles and hurdles; often involving lies.

For example, in this series Clary's mother, Jocelyn never told Clary they were Nephilim/part angel, and never acknowledged that world at all, constantly lying to Clary and shielding her from the truth. Jocelyn claims to have done out of love to protect Clary from a world of violence, death and pain that Jocelyn had experienced. She made a choice for who Clary is and who she would be without telling Clary she had a choice of who she was and could be. She indeed shielded Clary and had her eyes closed to that side of her she could not close the eyes of that world, which later resulted in Clary being exposed, and alone, in a foreign world, with nothing and no one to give her answers. Not knowing who she could trust to tell her the truth after what she saw as her mothers betrayal, missing a woman who she felt she no longer knew. While this was a act of love by Jocelyn, she lied to Clary, a young girl, betraying the innocent trust she had in her mother, leaving behind resentment where there had once only been love.

Also, when Clary was thrust into this world of shadow-hunters, she met and fell in love with Jace, a Nephilim boy who later turned out to be her biological brother, another piece of the life Jocelyn had run from. Clary no longer had any hope of being with Jace and had to hide her feelings away, never telling anyone how she felt, and no longer able to act upon her feelings. In the midst of covering her feelings for her older brother she tried to go out with Simon, an old mundane/human friend who had always had feelings for her. Not only did she lie and say and act as if she never had or has feelings for Jace, but she also tried to lie to herself and make herself love Simon. In some ways lying about not having feelings for someone just for the look of it is really just us lying to ourselves, by trying to tell ourselves that this is the truth.

In addition, in this book a Nephilim friend of Jace, Alec, lies about his love life constantly. While the Nephilim are not bias towards race, and gender they are extremely old fashioned, resulting in Alec not being able to come out with his sexuality due to his fear of exclusion from the government and his family. He confided in no one and never told anyone his secret. He even kept him self from any potential relationships due to his fear of acknowledging his sexuality, and made himself love Jace, his adopted brother, because he knew that there was no possible way he could be in a relationship with him, without breaking the law. While he's lying to everyone he also lies to himself and convinces him self he will never have feelings for any one ever while he was never even in love with him.

Lastly Luke, a father figure of Clary's and Jocelyn's old friend lies about his love for Jocelyn for twenty years in order to preserve his own feelings and their friendship. When Jocelyn first married Valentine Morgenstern, he never told her that he too had feelings for her because he was friends with both of them and was petrified with the idea of losing either of them if things ended badly for him. Later when Jocelyn ran from her old life, he joined her and said he would marry her, but she only dismissed it as him pitying her, for she was pregnant with Clary so Luke never mentioned his feelings again and acted as if he never had feelings for her and even went back home without her while she sought refuge in New York. But again, later his fear of her not in his life at all resulted in him going to find her and staying with her, even though they were only friends and that was all they ever were. He lied to everyone about his feelings out of the fear of rejection and ruining any relationship, even friendship between him and Jocelyn. Any love from her was enough for him, even if he had to lie and say it was enough.

Love while has the reputation of bringing out the best in us; sometimes it can bring out the worst parts of us. Lying to who we love in order to protect them but then distancing them from us because of the lies we tell for and to them. Lying about who we love to everyone and ourselves in the fear or rejection and heartbreak, willing to do anything for them except tell them the truth because they alone hold the power to hurt us worse then any other person. While love is something that can make us stronger it is also the thing that weakens us. While love seems the most powerful of feelings it also makes it the most dangerous and terrifying leaving us stripped and bare with only our feelings for someone left behind. Love gives us the power to blindly tell the truth to who we love but also the power to lie blindly for and to who we love. It's love that makes us liars in the end.

Blood Isn't Love

""Blood isn't love," said Magnus, and his voice was bitter. "Just ask Clary"". This is a constant idea portrayed in "The City of Ashes". That blood doesn't strengthen love, nor does it create love, shown in many parts of the book and through characters.

In the book, "The City of Ashes" by Cassandra Clare, the protagonist of this series, 16-year-old Clary Fray, discovers she is secretly part of the shadow-hunter community; a race of underground demon hunters. Throughout the series, Clary struggles to define who she is and where and who she fits in with in her new life, and who her family is in the literal and metaphoric way. She learns she has a father and a brother in this new life that her mother left behind in order to safely raise Clary as a mundane/human, free of violence and death. But Clary feels no blood relation to either of them, and is actually disgusted by her family situation, not wanting to share blood with either of them.

Throughout the series Clary learns that blood and your relation to someone isn't love, but your actual feelings and that person internally is what makes it real.

In this book, Clary learns her biological father, Valentine Morgernstern, is trying to undermine the shadow-hunter authorities, the Clave at what ever means necessary, even murder. In "The City of Ashes", when Clary alone is first confronted by her father, he says to her: "But isn't that what love is Clarissa?...Ownership?” meaning that love comes with connection, blood connection. When someone is your mother, your father or your child, and to love is to own, in his eyes that's what love is. Ownership. Clarys' response is "No...I don't think you get it...it's not just that someone belongs to you, it's that you give yourself to someone...". Clary sees and understands that just because someone is yours, does not necessarily mean you own, or love them. It's a matter of if you gave yourself to them and they gave themself to you. What made Clary able to fight Valentine was her strong belief that what he was doing was wrong, so biological father or not, she had no inclination or reason to be attached to someone who had never before been in her life. This is an important message for teens to be exposed to because it teaches readers that love isn't something that is chosen or defined for you, but is something you choose and define for yourself, whether you love your blood or not, but also teaches readers that not loving your blood is okay, because love is something that you earn not something that is given to you by association.

In addition, when Clary first met Jace Wayland, a closed off and traumatized shadow-hunter boy, they fell head over heels in love. Jace who had been raised to think that loving was a weakness, something that would mean destroying or to be destroyed, had met someone who taught him love made you stronger and not weaker. But there was one small problem with their happy ending. Clary and Jace were actually biological siblings. Although Clary knew they no longer had any potential future or relationship together, her feelings did not waver, nor did they switch to one of sibling affection. She could not share or act upon her feelings but she never actually tried to diffuse her feelings, only satisfied herself by being in his presence and life, even as a sister. As said in the book, "...desire is not always lessened by disgust...". Clary knows her family and friends would be disgusted if she and Jace were together, but she never tries to stop the way she feels because she know her love for Jace isn't disgusting. She can't see Jace as a brother the way she could never see Valentine as her father. Clary teaches us that regardless of whom you love, you should never dismiss how you really feel about someone.

Lastly, the way Clary chose to love Luke as a father figure teaches readers that blood isn't love. Although Luke was just an old friend from Clarys' mothers' past shadow-hunter life, he was the man who Clary loved and was loved by and admired. As said in the book, it was Luke who was snapping away with picture at her graduation, and pushing her on the swings and teaching her how to swim. Clary, was brought up thinking her biological mundane, father had died, felt no real emotional attachment to her father because she never knew him and never deluded herself into feeling the loss of a stranger when she had always had a dad -Luke- so why should she cry over a stranger she just calls dad?

With this book Cassandra Clare efficiently uses Clary to teach young adult readers that blood and family do not define love, but how you really feel about someone. Love is not something that should be stopped or limited but something that is limitless with no real definition, that is honest and real. This is something important for adolescents to be exposed to because it teaches them to not waste their time or affection on someone that isn't worth it just because their your dad or mom or your sibling, but to only give your affection to someone worthy of you and your feelings. Love shouldn't be given to someone just because their there but because your actual feelings for them.