Documentary on American Beauty

It is very interesting to see what American people in today's world perceive as beautiful. Since many Americans read magazines, watch advertisements, and see celebrities, they think that beautiful reflects only how you look on the outside. Americans overlook inner beauty like personality and feelings and only care about physical looks like how skinny people are and what people wear in order to determine someone's amount of beauty. This all stems from the media. Media has a big influence on how people perceive aspects of society like beauty. If the media shows pictures of many skinny people with small clothes on then people will think of the perfect man or woman as being very skinny wearing small clothes. People will not even start a relationship with someone who is an average size and wearing the average size of clothing because they do not think that these type of people are beautiful. Thinking of the perfect man or woman for marriage relates to how people think of their own beauty. People of average size who wear average size clothing will not think that they are beautiful because they want to be the perfect man or woman. That is a problem because it is next to impossible to be the perfect man or woman. The only way to be the perfect man or woman is to become anorexic or bulimic which is terrible for one's health. Americans will try to do the impossible in order to follow the status quo with beauty.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I learned a lot of new information from researching the book called The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. For example, I never knew that The Picture of Dorian Gray was the only novel that Oscar Wilde published until doing research. It was also very interesting for me to know that the book was banned for a long period of time because people saw references to homosexuality in it. Since homosexuality was illegal in England during this time period, it was surprising and shocking to people that somebody would write about homosexuality in a novel. In fact, Oscar Wilde was actually homosexual and had an affair with a man named Lord Alfred Douglas even though he was married to a woman named Constance Mary Lloyd. The Picture of Dorian Gray was originally published in 1890 in a magazine called Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. It was eventually revised and republished in 1891. The revised version of the book ended up having more chapters added, passages being deleted, passages being added, passages being moved, and fewer references to homosexuality. Some main themes of this book include duplicity, influence, responsibility,aestheticism, and the concept of the double life. Today, this book is highly regarded. In Ireland, The Picture of Dorian Gray was chosen as the book of 2010 for Dublin City's "One City, One Book" festival in its fifth year. Cultural events related to The Picture of Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde were hosted in Dublin, Ireland in April 2010. There are many published editions of this book for people to read.

The Stranger

The ending of the book called The Stranger by Albert Camus is very interesting. After Mersault is announced as being guilty in the courtroom and having the punishment of the death penalty by the guillotine, Mersault takes a lot of time to reflect on his experiences. It is interesting that Mersault talks about how Maman viewed certain aspects of life as well as his past experiences in the last chapter of this story. In the last two pages of the book, Mersault starts to understand Maman's life like why she had a fiance and why she played at beginning again. He believes Maman felt free and ready to live life all again just before she died. He uses these thoughts about Maman to signify that he has similar thoughts at this point in the story (before he is about to die) that Maman had before she died. Mersault also reflects on his relationship with his friends and Marie while sitting in his jail cell. He talks about how it doesn't matter which friends he liked more and how it doesn't matter if Marie would kiss him after he was pronounced guilty or if she would refuse to kiss him now that he is guilty. Based on his thoughts about Maman and experiences in his past life, it appears to the reader that Mersault enjoyed his past life and Maman even though he felt indifferent about that in the beginning of the story.
Mersault also thinks about if there is a way that he can escape the death penalty with his appeal but does not get his hopes up about that. The Chaplain otherwise known as the priest comes in and tries to keep Mersault's hopes up but Mersault doesn't believe him. Since Mersault does not believe in God, he does not believe the priest and eventually gets mad at the preist and what the priest tells him. On the very last page of the story, Mersault just accepts that he will die and just hopes that there will be a crowd of hateful people at his execution so that he will not feel alone.