“Battle of sexes”

Preferences

Have you ever felt preferred over your siblings by your mother? Or have you ever felt that the teacher prefers your classmate over you? Or have you ever preferred any of your friends over the others? Think about it. “What is the reason for this?” I asked myself this question over and over as I was starting chapter 8 of The Selfish Gene. I stopped reading and began thinking: “what could it be?” Then the light bulb in my head illuminated and I went back to the tittle of this book which says: “The Selfish Gene.”

And then I knew it, humans prefer people over others because they are selfish and want to be privileged by them. Now this left me I doubt, by now in the book Dawkins has made us realize that human beings are selfish, but I had never really thought of any examples of how that could apply to my life.

And as I sat on my desk chair, closing my eyes, and thinking in which ways I was implementing this in my life I realized that yes. Sometimes I am nicer to my sister over my bother because she gives me candy, and many other examples in which I will prefer a person over the rest for me to be benefited. So after my question was answered I continued to read. And most of it was boring things which stated the example of the mother with her offspring, but then came a sentence which catched me back into the reading. This sentence said: “We have asked whether parents can be expected to have favourites, and in general what is the best investment policy for a parent?” (pg.127) this was the question of something that I had not thought about but that triggered me to find the answer.

So I put the book back on my hand and continued passing page by page. I found that a mother is as closely related to all of her children. And regarding the children they should all receive the same attention for their mother and for each other. The problem is that both the mother as the kids have ½ of their attention in themselves, and this makes one children want more attention from his mother than his siblings. And the mother thinks in the same way. So yes due to this the mother will have preference to satisfy that ½ of attention in her. So after all everyone has preferences, due to the selfishness of our genes.

Planning

So, I’m in the car with my sister and my cousin who won’t stop chitchatting about their day at school. I am in the front seat of the car thinking and planning. I am thinking on the way that I was going to plan my afternoon in order to do all my homework and have some extra time to rest. Most of the time in a normal day in my life consists of planning. I enjoy planning, having everything organized and ready for all situations. We create our own sort of movie; we visualize it perfect, with no miscalculations. The problem is that this is a dream, and that in real life everything is different, problems occur and not everything is as perfect as we thought it was. “In either case it is unlikely that somewhere laid out in your brain is an actual spatial model of the events you are imagining”. (Pg 59). This shows that yes we can have an imaginary model, but we will never be able to have in our minds reality. “You may see them vividly in your mind’s eyes, or you may see and manipulate stylized abstractions of them (Pg 59)” In our minds we can change everything really easily and fix all problems immediately, problems seem way smaller than they really are. Finally it is very normal to plan in advance, though many times things may not end up the way we want it to be.

High Expectations

Candide is a very interesting story. And most importantly Candide is a remarkable character. Throughout most of the book until the end Candide has wished to marry Connegonde. This is like some of the dreams that we have and we keep on dreaming about them, like for example I have always dreamed of dancing beautiful ballet and every free time that I have I will try to think about my solos and how great I can do it with my partner. But then when the real moment comes and my dreams are over and all that is left is reality I will notice that my partner does not dance as good as I thought he would. And this is a disappointment for me, because I had tried my best and had dreams but suddenly they faded away. A similar thing happened to Candide when he was completely in love with Cunegode and her extraordinary beauty. As the book advances and Candide has the opportunity of seeing her and realized that each time that he saw her he felt that he was more in love and to a certain extend he is dozed off by her. And he proposed her to marry him and she accepted. Time kept passing by and Candide could not stop thinking about her. But then a disappointment arose because when Candide met with her again he saw how Cunegode had changed so much and she was no longer as beautiful as she was before. Due to this moment and realization Candide decided that he did not love her, and decided not to marry. "At the bottom of his heart Candide had no wish to marry Cunégode"(138). This quote is totally true, after all Candide was in love with her beauty and not with her in the inside. The thing that most surprised me about this was all that Candide went through and did for the love and to marry Cunegode, and he never gave up. But in the ended Candide ended up disappointed just as I did.

Satire

Candide is a parody that includes many examples of satire. But in these chapters specifically I would like to go in depth in the examples and different ways that irony is included, also how Voltaire makes fun of other people. I am going to start by showing the example of irony that I caught. This was: "But I have never forgotten that I am the daughter of a Pope."(57) This is said by the old woman. But going back to the ironic part of this is that the pope is not supposed to have any children, they should not reproduce themselves. And evidently here in the book the pope did reproduce himself and had kids.

Then there is also another example of satire which is target. This one we can see towards the arrogance of the nobility. This target come from part of Don Fernando, the way that Voltaire does this is by stating how naturally the nobility should have power and money. But in this book Don Fernando which is the representation of the nobility is describes as: a lair, a cheater and in a way a joker. So by this we can see the huge amount of target vs. the nobility’s arrogance.

And last I saw that Voltaire makes fun of Don Fernando by mentioning hin full name, which also includes all his honors and tittles that he has earned in time. “Don Fernando d’Ibarra y Figueroa y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza, a nobleman with a degree of pride appropriate to one who bore so many names”. (Pg 58)

The Old Woman

As I continue to read Candide I found that specially in these two chapters the old woman is great mentioned. I can say that from what a read she has a negative attitude vs. life but she is alert of the world that she lives in. The old woman relays all her actions and thoughts on the previous life experiences. This is why the proposal that the old woman gives to Cunegond is to base her decisions on what she had to live the past years and on her prior decisions. Also she encourages both Candide and Conegond to gather more knowledge in order to make better judgments.

“I would not even have mentioned my own misfortunes, if you had not irked me a bit, and if it weren’t the custom, on shipboard, to pass the time with stories.” This is what the old woman tells Conegond and through this we can see that she is a person that has passed through very hard moments in life but that these help her form better as a character. Through this character of hers we can see that she completely lacks self-pity.

Personally I think that this old woman has gone through so much misfortunes that she should be constantly thinking about suicide and she does actually but she keeps on saying: “A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more.” In a way I can relate this to the fact that she is the Pope’s daughter and that she knows that if she takes her life she will be committing a sin and will go to hell. I think that this is the strongest bond that hold’s her towards keep living life.

This old woman is a very interesting and important character in Candide and I really enjoyed analyzing her.

More Than Words

So I am sitting at my desk and I am reading Voltaire Candide, as I pass page by page I encounter with some words to which I have no idea of their meaning, hence I had to use the dictionary and my knowledge on word context to find the meaning on the word and its effect on the sentence. The word to which I had to do the most effort to understand was:

Ghastly- “Candide was moved more by compassion than by horror at the sight of this ghastly scarecrow, and gave him the two florins he had received from James, the honest Anabaptist.” (28) The first think I did when I saw this word in this sentence was to look up the definition. And this is what I found: 1 a : terrifyingly horrible to the senses : FRIGHTENING b : intensely unpleasant, disagreeable, or objectionable
2 : resembling a ghost(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ghastly)

As I read this I figured that it was a negative adjective. That it was describing something in this case the scarecrow in a pessimistic way. Then after looking the definition I did a sentence analysis and first realized how the author said that candied was more moved by compassion than by horror, this to me meant that when he saw it, the scarecrow had more than just a direct and shocking reaction instead it had a deep reply and in a way with sorrow. Candide felt sorry for the scarecrows state. As a matter of fact Candide felt so sorry for him that he even gave him 2 florins, which were the gold at that time. These florins represented a lot of money which makes us realize that this scarecrow was in real needy conditions.

As I keep on reading I find that this scarecrow is Pangloss, Candide’s tutor. And maybe because it was the tutor Candide felt more compassion and was so shocked in seeing him in such a terrifying condition.