GVSU Honors Blog!

This week, we discussed the film Even the Rain. One thing that stood out to me from the film was how obsessed the Americans were with making money from their own documentary - so much that they completely ignored the fact that the Bolivians were dying for lack of water. The filmmakers did not care if people died of thirst, so long as their film was produced. At first, I did not make a connection to our society today, but as I thought more, I realized how many people in our communities do not have enough to live on, while we are content to live our lives and make money while ignoring the poverty around us. We (myself included) often do a poor job of helping the underprivileged in society. But if we do not take action, we are no better than the American filmmakers in Even the Rain . We all should actively look for ways to help those in need, whether that is supporting a local mission, fighting for legislation that will help address poverty issues, or contributing in some other way. As th...

Culture is extremely interesting to me as well. It is fascinating to learn about different rituals and the reasons why different cultures practice them. I think the reason for America's lack of community is that America is a blend of so many different cultures. We as Americans do not have any one people group to look back to for our heritage. I think this shows that diversity often comes at the expense of unity and community.

Talking this week about the human rights abuses in El Salvador was obviously a disturbing topic, but it was also, in a strange way, fascinating. I did not know much about U.S. foreign policy in the 1970s and 1980s, but our discussions opened my eyes to the number of unnecessary conflicts the U.S. involves itself in. Undoubtedly, the U.S. government, in most of these situations, did not foresee the harm that its presence was to cause - rather, its intention was to help. Therefore, it is not to be criticized as if it was intentionally murdering innocent civilians. On the other hand, though, while it was not the cause of civilian deaths, the government is still fully responsible for those deaths. As we all can agree, the way the government deflected that responsibility and never apologized to the families involved is appalling. This shows that the government needs to be held accountable to its citizens for its actions, and it needs to thoroughly count the cost before involving itself in n...

Hi Emma! That is interesting to hear a possible explanation for why Padilla and Guillen had opposing viewpoints - I had never thought of that before. It completely makes sense that different generations of Cubans would have different perspectives on the effects of the Revolution. I also agree that it is nice to be able to read a poem and right away understand its general message and intent.

This week, we dove deep into poetry and tried to analyze the intent and the message of different poems. As the discussion progressed, we were able to come up with several plausible explanations as to what each of the poems meant (thanks to Lillie). This struck me as interesting, because when the poem was written, its author probably had only one meaning in mind. We could be interpreting the poem in a way that the poet him/herself never even thought of. It is extremely interesting to me that we can look at a poem and simply create our own story around the way we interpret it, and then connect our narrative to history and argue why our interpretation of the poem "works". Ultimately, this is the beauty of poetry, and of creative writing in general - it can take on many different perspectives based on the "lens" through which it is interpreted.

Hi Joe! I completely agree that Castro ended up as the same type of leader that Batista had been. People can start out with good intentions and completely go off in a different direction. This is a reminder to base our perception of leaders not just on what they promise, but how they carry out their promises.