A Choice of Control
While reading the poem by Adrienne Rich in A Measure of Restraint, I was immediately reminded of the sample essay prompt we read in class about Huxley’s Brave New World. Huxley had predicted that what we loved would eventually be the cause of our deaths and that is exactly the story of Marie Curie, for she kept “denying/her wounds came from the same source as her power”. In this case, it seems quite fitting to call Marie Curie foolish since she was consumed by her very own obsession with radium.
I feel like you could argue that dying because of something you love is not all that bad. In some instances, it is better to die from what you love than from what you hate because at least you die happy, right? When Huxley claimed that we would die from what we loved, I don’t think he wanted to argue that we would have the better option when facing death; rather, he presented the idea that our own foolishness would mark our end. Love is a choice, which means that not loving is also choice. While love can be controlled, death cannot. But to say that the things we love cause our death is to say that we are able to control death since our love cannot be controlled. It’s like we can choose to control one thing, whether that be death or love, but not both. Even with the freedom to choose, people continue to pursue love when it’s unhealthy and due to this lack of control, they feed death into their own bodies, obliviously enjoying the process. Raymo speaks along the same lines as Huxley. Without a self-imposed restraint on our hunger for knowledge, there would dangerous consequences. At the heart of these concepts is control and the ways in which we utilize it could eventually determine our own fate.
Song of the week:
DREAMERS - Die Happy // https://youtu.be/cY96Q0bhNCg
Make sure to check out this song and happy ap studying :)
Wow! I liked your deep post Esther! I think that your point about being able to control love or death, but not both is very insightful. While we often times are told to pursue our passions, we could definitely be leading ourselves to our own demise, without control.
ReplyDeleteNice post Esther! You make a really good point that sometimes things that we are passionate about can sometimes get out of control and sometimes cause us to lose track of our lives. I would argue that is probably the best way to go out though, but I may be a little bias.
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