English 123: Blog 12

Today we talked about a lot of different themes associated with the novel Mister Pip and the one that I found to be the most insightful for me was the passage on page 142 and 143.

“Others began to speak. They gave their bits of memory to Mr. Watts. They filled in a picture of his dead wife. In this way he learned of a girl he had never met. A girl who could hold her breath underwater for longer than anyone else. A girl who could speak German with the nuns. A tiny girl who once got lost. The big things came back to us, and the little things. Mr. Watts did not care how small. He learned what color ribbons his dead wife wore to school as a girl. He heard how she lost a front tooth. It happened as she lay prone on a canoe, daydreaming she was a fish, when the prow popper up and smacked her lip. He learned how proud she had been of her first pair of shoes. So proud, she carried them everywhere with her, preferring anyway to walk barefoot.

This quote states what I feel very strongly about. The details about how act, walk, and live are what make us interesting individuals. The details about how we read and what we do to books whether it be dog earring the pages or writing in the margins say something about us.

People crack me up because they are always saying they want to be unique and be their own person, when in all reality the person they are before they try to be different is the most unique person they can be. When people try to be different is when people become similar. I will use the examples of girls because I know more about girls than guys. When a girl tries to stand out she will go to the mall to buy clothes from the “popular” stores and she will take magazine pictures into the hair salon and create an image that is similar to every other girl you see. If people would be content with who they are and be happy being themselves they would realize they are a unique individual without having to change anything. However, this epiphany is hard to come by and requires a lot of looking into yourself and learning who exactly you are before it can completely happen. So the idea is be happy with who you are the details that make you who you are because the details are the most important part of life.