Madness of the Floating World%u2026as well as Finals Week

Ah how fun the last weeks of a college semester can be, and how I never seem to prepare myself well enough for the craziness that they entail.  Whether it is the “dead” week where I only manage to squeeze in 10 hours of sleep…combined, the pressures of final week, the work required to move into a new house, or the thoughts of home, freedom, and summer, I always find myself going a bit crazy as final week comes to a close. As I look back on this semester, particularly my Multicultural Literature class, and ask myself what I have gained, I am happy to say that many things come to mind.  Of course the many books that we read through these semesters pop up in my head, however any class can force you to read books, I like to think about why we read these books, and what the overall message was. 

Within this semester we were able to read about different characters and stories from all around the globe.  We read about an artist from Japan who was trying to find his way in his post war nation, a delusional Botswana farmer, a young Indian girl who finds her way to the state of Iowa, and finally a series of satires on the way humans live all around the globe.  All along the semester we also read a book that seemed to intertwine all the ideas that these books represented.  So after all these books, and pages, what can I gather as the overall message?  If I had to pick one word to encompass this entire semester, (which is a rather hard task mind you) I would have to pick Globalization.  I think that all these books have shown us how there really is no “Us or Them” binary…just “Us.”  What I mean by this is that all these people live all around the world, yet they still have the same problems and issues that we face. I think these books teach us to transcend these barriers that keep us thinking we are different then “they,” when in fact we aren’t very different at all

All the books we read this year seemed to incorporate the idea of being different yet the same.  In these books, we read about characters that all seemed to be in a world they should not have readily belonged to, but did in fact belong to more then they would think.  In “Artist of the Floating World,” we watch Ono struggle to adjust to a society that he does not feel he belongs to.  Although he is very well accepted into this society he feels out of place because of how much things have changed in the time that two bombs have dropped.  This is an interesting struggle because it shows how out of place we can feel even when we are in our own “home.”  I know that’s a feeling that I have felt many times, even when I feel that I am in a place that I would consider my home.  Times change, and so do people, and I think that everyone needs to learn to adjust to these changes, and not resist as much as most of us tend to do.  As Ono reflects on the past at the end of the novel, I think we must all learn to reflect on the good part and memories in our lives, but not to dwell in the past too much, because that can distract us from the present.  I think the quote that Ishiguro close his book with does a good job of showing this contrast you must have.  “I smiled to myself as I watched these young office workers from my bench, Of course, at times, when I remember those brightly lit bars, and all those people gathered beneath the lamps, laughing a little more boisterously perhaps then those young men yesterday, but with much the same good heartedness, I feel a certain nostalgia for the past and the district as it used to be.  But to see how our city has been rebuilt, how things have recovered so rapidly over these years, fills me with genuine gladness.” (Ishiguro Pg. 206)

In the cleverly titled, “East. West,” Salman Rushdie uses satire to poke fun at the most basic of human instincts and actions.  In “The Prophet’s Hair,” we examine the irony of religion in a Muslim family that essentially implodes when an item of religious importance is acquired.  The greed that is shown in this short story is something that all humans can relate to, if not directly, then probably indirectly.  The way, which it is told, almost as a fable, is very comparable to most westerners, however the subject matter of the Muslim religion is more familiar to easterners.  I think Rushdie does this a lot in his writing, comparing and contrasting.  Rushdie also wrote the short story “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers.” In this story, Rushdie creates an imaginary world where the famous Ruby Slippers are up for auction, and the craziness that is involved in this process.  Although this is an imaginary world that he creates, I think he is trying to satire a post-modernized world.  I think this version shows a globalized world, and the potential negative aspects of it. I think Salman Rushdie does an excellent job of using satire to show how similar people, whether from the east or west, are to each other. 

The Craziness that I feel as I progress through the final weeks of school is something that I have come to expect.  What I have learned about it, is when I examine it closely and take it one step at a time, it does not seem so crazy after all.  This is the outlook I have on globalization after this semester.  The concept of connecting over six billion people on the enormous globe seems like a daunting task, but when you examine it more closely, and look at people around the globe that aren’t much different then yourself, globalization seems like a much more plausible concept.