random arse english paper i liked
The Ties That Bind
Most people have grown complacent with their perception of reality. They are absolutely certain with what is real and what is a mere fabrication. When someone diverts from the status quo of what is essentially real, they are labeled as insane, because what they are perceiving to be real, is not apparent to those around them. In a manner that is typical of our human nature the subject is immediately saturated with medication and locked, seeing that as the only solution for the problem. The choice on whether or not one acts upon what they are perceiving is does not matter. The true question lies with are they ready to accept the consequences of it.
The subjective perceived reality of the individual is the foundation of their entire existence. Without that, they are nothing. If they individually do not observe the perseity of something, then it is in a state of non existence. Conversely, if such an individual were to decree that something is, then it exists in that person's own state of being. No one exists unless they personally validate that they do. Since the only important reality to an individual is the one that they perceive, if they do not acknowledge themselves, they are not.
In The Book of Sands, everything the narrator knew, was tied into his neat perception, order, and categorization of everything. The Book of Sands destroyed that. When one comes across something that defied the basis of their existence, everything that they know comes in to question. If one part of their lives turns out to not be true, what is not to say that everything else they have centered their lives around is truly real?
The simple pleasures of life, do not really come from external sources alone, it all depends on what one does with them. When one is frightened, feels alone, or just overwhelmed, they tend to revert to a child like state where they need something familiar and consistent to soothe them. Since the mother seems to be incapable of what is supposed to be the maternal instinct of unconditional love, the little boy is forced to look somewhere else for the solidarity that he needs. Because the mother had no real understanding of what the rocking horse meant to Paul, she perceives it as something harmful. In her eyes it is a dangerous and unhealthy obsession. It was something that normal boys of his age should not be bothering with.
For him, the surrogate mother that he could actually count on more than his real mother, just so happened to be a rocking horse. This horse while harmless on its own ,(as such any object is harmless on its own without some form extrinsic tampering) became the link between perceived reality and subjective reality. The world that Paul's family lived in should not have even been an accurate depiction of a world amicable to the needs of a child. Somehow, when Paul was on the rocking horse, he could see the outcome of horse races. Whether it was supernatural or some sort of dimensional anomaly, one can not tell, but in either case it involves two different worlds.
The part that everyone else perceived, the rocking horse, is the mere physical representation of it within that world. It is entirely inconsequential, in regards to its real purpose and use. When Paul rode the horse, he entered his own world, in which time in a linear sense was entirely inconsequential. It was as such because he could see the outcomes of races in everyone else's world. The only truth that he got came from his own subjective reality. The rocking horse served as a link between two worlds.
The same as the rocking horse was a link between the world of the imagined and our world, the book served the same purpose in The Book Of Sands. While the rocking horse was more of an innocuous link, The Book Of Sands was a much more blunt intrusion on reality. The rocking horse was more of a personal connection that Paul had created himself, where as the Book of Sands fell into the hands of the narrator. It simply was. It was no creation that one could place a date of its inception. The way that the book and the rocking horse affected reality, while both different, had the same underlying principal: the irrelevance and complete disregard of how one perceives time.
Fantastical revelations, waiting inside the Book of Sands, were simply discarded. It held the secrets of the universe within it, and the narrator, overwhelmed by his own human nature, sought to get rid of it. It shattered his own perceptions of reality, and by it simply existing, shatters all our perceptions of reality and time. In our world, a book of this nature is only possible within the world of the imaginary. However, it still exists, just as time does. Our perception of time is simply imagined. Arbitrary counting units, based upon the cycling of our planet, and ourselves, is what dictates every aspect and moment of our lives. No one questions “Why?”, they just accept it as it is. They know it is there, they can feel themselves age. They can see those around them wither and die. They can see the effects of an outside source, but they can not see the source itself. Time is only truly possible within the world of the imagined. Only in the minds own subjective realities, can time be assigned any great significance. Outside of the human condition, it just simply is.
Because of the varying natures of the objects in question, the main characters from each story are going to have slightly different reactions, but not just because of the nature of the object, but the nature of themselves. An older man, who is very set and sure in his life, one who catalogs, and organizes a massive book collection, is going to react differently, than a naïve young boy, who was already presented with a slightly skewed perception of what was. In Paul's childish curiosity, he saw nothing wrong with what he was doing, he was only helping his mother to try to be happy. Whether he pierced inter-dimensional rifts or contacted those in the land of the dead for his information, mattered not to him. As long as his mother was happy, he didn't care. The old man however saw this anomaly as “an obscene thing that affronted and tainted reality itself.” (Borges 403) and had to be done away with. Once again succumbing to his human reaction to the unknown and what he can not understand, he sought to either destroy or get rid of the book. Curious how his initial idea of destruction was one of the most primal ways he could have done away with it short of beating the moldy tome with the bones of a dead animal. He decided against this however for he “feared that the burning of an infinite book might like-wise prove infinite and suffocate the planet with smoke” (Borges 403). Since he concluded he would be unable to destroy the book without suffocating the world he chose to just abandon it in a library. The reason why he could not destroy the book without destroying the world, is because one can not destroy time. One can only destroy their own perceptions and notions of what time is. The very fabric of the universe can not be simply fed to the flames. By ignoring the book, he is choosing to ignore his own new, albeit chaotic, perceived notion of what is. What he knows now to be true he will abandon, and go back to the common accepted knowledge of the rest of mankind.
The man, rooted in what he already knew cowered back into darkness, and the boy Paul willingly rode himself to the very end of his existence, because it was the only thing he knew as true.
When Paul's mother walked in on him riding the horse thus creating a link between herself and Paul's reality, it was a cataclysmic collision of the two worlds. When she was “frozen with anxiety and fear.” (Lawrence 479) while waiting near the door, dreanched in her own apprehension, she stood teetering comfortably inside her own little world. As she crossed the door's threshold, she crossed into the unknown. She was confronted with something she could not understand. As her subconsciously sexually obsessed pre-pubescent son, he was ripped from his own anomalous womb The mother, in a strange unfamiliar surrounding, instantly shot for the lightswitch. Since she is still primal under all of her frivolities, she reacted to an unfamiliar situation just by throwing herself into the arms of something that she was familiar with. She does not think of another way to go about things and ended up killing her son from such a huge reality shock. When this happened it showed Paul the pseudo-enlightenment of the realm of his mother and her droll socialite friends, none of whom have an original idea of who they really are. Pauls stumbling upon the top side of a rubber band was at his peak at the furthest distance that the band could stretch. Eventually it must snap itself shut. When the two ends of the band contract, both worlds inside of it will eventually collide. “The blaze of light suddenly lit him up” (Lawrence 479) When she was “frozen with anxiety and fear.” (Lawrence 479) she stood teetering comfortably inside her own little world. As she crossed the door's threshold, she crossed into the unknown. She was confronted with something she could not understand.
When someone devotes so much of themselves to something, especially in great secrecy, part of their humanity goes in along with it. Each character was consumed in a way by their obsession. Even though Paul died, and the narrator lived, which one is really tied down by the constraints of life? Each of these respective authors leaves the question of who is free from the ties that bind them to what they are conditioned to be. Only in rare moments does one have a moment of original clarity in which they understand of the concept of things greater than them, and it is in these moments, that they validate their existence.