Snow Mexican

It is generally accepted that human interactions should be cordial. It is generally accepted that people should help other people. It is generally understood that if you treat someone nicely, they'll treat you the same way. If such facts are generally accepted, then why does the Land of Opportunity turn away prospective hardworking citizens? Why was a whole race forced to submit to tyranny?

A whole caravan of people, escaping gang violence and a crumbling government, are being turned away for what? Some claim that they take jobs away from hardworking Americans. This can't be true because they only do jobs that "hardworking" Americans won't do. The POTUS claimed that terrorists are mixed in with the caravan and are hoping to slip into the U.S. unnoticed. This claim was widely refuted by many news sources and even some of the caravan members themselves.

Even after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. African Americans were still treated with disdain and disgust. The Jim Crow laws in the South made it so that slavery might as well have not been banned. Segregation caused the deaths of a great many blacks. The Song of Solomon shows us how blacks tried to fight back against white oppression, with largely unsuccessful results.

To live, or not to live

Why are we alive?

A question that's been asked since the dawn of civilization and probably a long time before that too. The ancient Mesopotamians posed philosophical questions inquiring into their existence, as did the Chinese, the Greeks and Romans, the Mayans, the Indians, and the Europeans. For many millennia, countless civilizations have grappled with the reason for our very being. Yet, none of them succeeded in the finding the answer.

Have you ever questioned your own existence? The futility of your actions? No matter what you do, you're just one person in a small community in a small city in a small country frozen in this moment in time (wait, the moment just passed, I meant the next moment) and that your life (of maybe 100 years if you're really lucky) is but a grain of sand in the deserts of time. Look at 秦始皇 (Qin Shi Huang), the first king of China. I bet he thought he was a hotshot and that people would think about him for the rest of time. But wait, I'm having trouble putting a face to the name. Why? Because he doesn't matter. His life (49 years) is a casualty of time.

The Dialogue of Pessimism, an ancient Mesopotamian dialogue, outlines the futility of our actions. Basically, a master is asking his slave about a course of action and the slave agrees. Then the master changes his mind and the slave also agrees. Through this dialogue, the author/carver (it was carved on a tablet) is essentially telling the reader that life is absurd and what that you do doesn't matter.

In the Song of Solomon, Milkman tries to convince Guitar that the Seven Days ain't worth his time. He says, "none of that shtuff is gonna change how I live or how any other black dude lives"(slightly paraphrased to keep this PG). Guitar isn't convinced and he remains a part of the Seven Days. We readers know that Milkman is right. In the words of the great Shakespeare, "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

R is for Red

The color red is one of the three primary colors. Therefore, it features either directly or indirectly in everything we see. In popular culture, red has often been associated with anger and frustration. In nature, animals use red pigment as a part of aposematic coloration to warn predators to stay away. In the Song of Solomon, red rose petals are scattered on the ground to symbolize Robert Smith's blood after he splatters on the ground. In the movie The Boy and the Beast, the protagonist's mentor is a crimson bear who's temperament can be likened to a volcano, constantly fuming and with periodical eruptions. However, red doesn't always have a fiery connotation. In The Woman Warrior, red symbolizes happiness and luck. When people think of love, they think of a red heart. The Potala Palace in Lhasa, China, consists of a palace and a red palace. The red palace is where the Dalai Lamas (Spiritual leaders) built their shrines and chapels. The red of the walls represents the stateliness and power of the past Dalai Lamas who lived there. 

More than One Way to Draw a Maus

From Carl Bark's Donald Duck universe to Joseph Barbera's Tom and Jerry to Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. These works by humans have chosen to center their conflicts around animals. Art has long been used to portray animals. In fact, some of the earliest known works of art, paintings and drawings tens of thousands of years old, portray animals. In the millennia then, animals have taken a central role in our books, TV shows, and commercials. As an example, one comic has used animals to transcend the bonds of humanity.

Maus is a comic book illustrating the author's father's experience in Nazi Europe. Contrary to other popular works, Art Spiegelman (the author of Maus) gives humans animal features, versus giving animals human characteristics. He represents all the Jews with mice and the Nazis with cats, alluding to their predator prey relationship. Maus tackles an extraordinarily hard topic to write about: the Jewish experience during WWII. Through his clever use of anthropomorphism, Art can accurately communicate his father's story without the stigma against Holocaust memoirs. Which just goes to show that animals really do make everything better.