Hallelujah

Hallelujah is a cry of worship or rejoicing. It can be used in many different circumstances.. Throughout the course of the song “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, he is able to draw you to the truthful aspects of hallelujah and it’s broken meanings. The song’s complexity came with layers of macro and micro themes. I noticed that many of these themes revolved around simply reality and the despair in it. Reality has layers in itself layers of hope and despair, as previously mentioned. This song focuses on both but doesn’t shield you from the despair.

“It’s not a cry you can hear at night

It’s not somebody who has seen the light

It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah”

Hallelujah can be used in many different circumstances. One major theme I noticed was the hardship of a relationship, be it a marriage, romance, family, death, or just altogether love. He’s saying love is a miracle, but not one at the same time. Love isn’t above humans. Humans fall for each other, they get hurt because sometimes the people they love just aren’t there to catch them. I believe a theme is love because although he is going against stereotypical love, he is giving a realistic point on how love isn’t always something to rejoice for or worship.

“And even though it all went wrong

I’ll stand before the lord of song

With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah”

Another theme I picked up on from this song was strength and perseverance. Leonard skillfully demonstrates how life can’t be planned or scheduled, but some light can be found in the darkest things. Death or loss are themes that can be associated with what went wrong. It takes enormous amounts of strength to admit to something that may have been associated be it in a bad or good way with what went wrong and allow it to represent your idendity for all that its worth on the day of truth- and that may not always be spiritual. Perhaps it is a funeral, coming out, or change of religion. It may be simply something that you believe in that you bring to start from nothing.

“A blaze of light in every word

it doesn’t matter which you heard

The holy or the broken hallelujah”

A broken hallelujah represents the despairing side of life, as a hallelujah goes with the hopeful side.  “The holy or the broken hallelujah” both bring you back to real, and in real life a major theme is despair and its journey from despair and loss to strength to standing up even if that means standing alone. In real life, people too often get caught up in despair, myself included. Moral values have been off since mall shootings, airport shootings, guilt, lies, and innocence are played as readily as a gambler’s hand. Homes lost, suicide, and peer pressure are more examples of what is flooding the news.

So many themes come out of the lyrics, repetition, and tone of the song. It represents a journey and development of the theme strength as a macro theme. While micro themes of loss, forgiveness, forgiveness, moral values and compasses also come into play. Warping despair into strength takes some serious perseverance. Dream of daring to just try.

Resisting Power

Rosaura possesses no power in the world. She is the maid’s daughter and a young Hispanic girl. She has strikes against her in social class, where she rests quite close to the bottom. Yet, she seems oblivious to all of these facts and the ulterior motives of the people around her in “The Stolen Party” by Liliana Heker. She believes she has power and respect, as proven in the first scene when she stubbornly stands up to her mother about going to a party at the house where the mother is the maid. “‘Ah yes, your friend”, her mother grumbled. She paused, ’Listen Rosaura,’ she said at last. ’That one’s not your friend. You know what you are to them? The maid’s daughter, that’s what.’” The mother has obviously become worn in. She has learned how unjust the system is and wants to keep her daughter away from the party. She wants to protect her. “You know nothing about being friends!” Rosaura counters. She is resisting the little power her mother has- her power as a guardian. Her resistance causes her mom to not give in exactly, but to allow her daughter to see for herself. However, Rosaura reads this as her mother submitting to her and realizing she was right- adding on to her unrealistic, naïve amount of power.

At the party, Rosaura feels she has power over the other kids because the adults always ask her to help because she “knew the house so much better than the others” and the others were “much to boisterous”. In reality. Señora Ines is exercising her power over Rosaura because she is able to manipulate her and prove she is better than Rosaura by making her do all of the work. In addition, the girl with the bow has power because she “know(s) all of Luciana’s friends but I(She) do(does) not know you(Rosaura)”. This hints that there is something more going on- an ulterior motive. Rosaura still puts up resistance to the girl with her “so what?” and by kicking the girl in the shin. She still believes she is right. She believes she is more right than her mother and this girl with a bow.

Finally, at the end of the book the plot is revealed. Rosaura is waiting for her party favor with her mother when instead of a gift, Señora Ines hands over two checks. Señora Ines has put on this show to tell Rosaura that she is powerless- Señora Ines belittles her. Rosaura finally realizes that her resistance may not have brought her power. It only brought worry out of her mother and amusement out of the girl with a bow. The only power she earned was power to believe her own stories, power to resist, power to be stubborn, power to believe.  Yet, her power feels diminished once Señora Ines hands over those checks. She reminds them of her power. The power of class. The power of wealth, but what about the power of the heart?

A Year of Books Gone By

2013 was a wonderful year for reading. I read an abundance of books, well over fifty. My favorite books of 2013 were Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, The Fault in our Stars, The Testing, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Old Man and the Sea, The Lunar Chronicles, Will Grayson Will Grayson, and A Long Walk to Water.

Allow me to begin by saying that I went on a wild rollercoaster that randomly sped up, slowed down, spun, confused me, scared me, and finally made me cry. That is to say, the books I read had no particular relationship to each other in terms of genres. Of course, the Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow series obviously shared the sci-fi genre with each other as well as with the Lunar Chronicles and The Testing. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and The Old Man and the Sea are both classic realistic fiction books with hints of historical fiction, especially in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Will Grayson Will Grayson and The Fault in our Stars are realistic fiction. A Long Walk to Water was a work of fiction based on a true story. The variety of genres touched me and moved me in different ways- telling me to move on, be strong.

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, tells of a futuristic world in which Aliens have attacked and nearly destroyed the Earth. The Earth is preparing for the next alien- or formic invasion by training precocious young children the strategies behind warfare in “Battle School”. One main student, Ender, advances quickly through the school to lead his own mock army- but all the while he questions the very morals behind destroying the formics when so little is known about them. Ender’s Shadow, also by Orson Scott Card is a “brother novel”. It tells the same story from the point of view of Bean, a soldier in Ender’s mock army. I loved both of these because the author left a lot to connect to. Is what you’re told really all that matters? What if what you must do is different from justice? Who gets to decide how severe the consequences are allowed to be?

The Testing, a new book by Joelle Charbonneau I reluctantly approached, I was afraid it would be another rip-off of the Hunger Games. Instead, I found a fairly original piece of writing I had never heard of before. Cia lives in the futuristic united commonwealth where you fought for high grades and the prodigies were selected to take the test in Tosu City. Cia is selected for the testing. Cia is thrilled, until her father confronts her with his own stories about the testing. She begins to wonder what the real consequence is for failing the test. How far do the powers of government stretch? More importantly, how far should they be allowed to stretch?

The Lunar Chronicles, by Marissa Meyer, are about a cyborg named Cinder. It is a twist on fairytales as we know them. The evil stepmother not being even the worst of this Cinderella’s problems. Her problem is the lunar queen-the queen from the moon- who seeks to destroy her prince. The series continues with Scarlet- a not-so-helpless little red riding hood and I anticipate the next addition to the series-  Cress who will be the twist on Rapunzel. This twist earns independence for the characters because they are hated world-wide rather than loved world-wide. They must earn their respect. I loved the strength the characters learned to hold on to because it taught me to hold on.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was especially meaningful to me because it tells the story of a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, and although I am not poor, I recognize may places in the story. From birth, love, feeling neglected, Betty Smith has replicated the true essence of life. It is hard to live, it is harder to grow up, and it is harder to hold on to what you must do rather than what you should be able to. We inherit what we are allowed to do, where we are allowed to go. Before this book I never really understood how the other half lived.

The Old Man and the Sea is a true story of perseverance, well-written and heartfelt. An old man exhausted from days of defeat, having not had a good catch in ages, sets out determined to bring home a fish. He finally catches one at the end of the day, but it is a giant and the fish steers him as much as he steers the fish. It is a beautiful fish and it makes one respect perseverance, the beauty of nature, and “respect” itself.

A Long Walk to Water was a shorter book. It addressed the need for water and uniting over this common goal no matter the differences of the people/tribes. It tells the story of one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, and a young girl who can't get an education because every day she hikes to get water. It is an important issue to discuss because while we worry about what we should order, make, or basically eat for dinner tonight- while we argue about book characters and even as we read books and find books others aren’t supplied with so basic a need as water.

Up-and-coming author John Green owns two of the titles on my list. The Fault in our Stars is such a real story full of metaphors and nothing is sugar coated or exaggeratedly bad. It shows life as it really is. Hazel and Gus are both victims of cancer. Gus loves Hazel but she is too afraid that she will be a grenade to make connections. She doesn't want her death to hurt anybody. It was easy to connect to because it uses local color, tone, and even language. Will Grayson Will Grayson is a collaborated book between John Green and David Levithan. Two boys, both named Will Grayson travel two separate paths that intertwine in the most unexpected of ways. It teaches about love and what it really means- about learning how to hold on because that’s what it takes to be able to let go. “Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters.”

What I can finally state about what I've learned as a result of my 2013 reading is that we have a lot to ask ourselves as a human race about what is right and what we need to let go.