【100-2 第三名】財法一 洪〇凡：The Help

The Help

參賽者：洪〇凡（財法一）
名次：第三名
書名：The Help
得獎作品：

     The Help depicted the south life in America in 1960s.The blacks were crippled by the chains of discrimination. As servants, they hadn’t been treated as normal people. Instead, they’d been put scorn on, bullied, even killed without reason. With no help, they could only silently sustain hardship in numerous events. Though I knew that misery from textbooks, somehow I just couldn’t feel the same way. That is, what I knew was the history. However, through this book, I felt the words’ real, jumping out of the pages, and then visualized in front of me. The stories in the book are colorful and lifelike, making me touched. Because of it, I could imagine all miseries of mankind that they’d suffered. To be more exact, I comprehended what tribulations they had been to be subjected to. In the book, a white girl, Skeeter Phelan, who was a green hand of the society, irritated by an abominable means by her friend who reckoned that blacks were all dirty and contagious so prohibiting them from using whites’ restrooms. This made Skeeter felt revolted and then due to this, she determined to write the stories from those who worked for whites, and were treated badly. What she’d done was a pioneering work. I admire her anti-unfairness deeds, but I admire those who were brave enough to dictate their own stories to Skeeter much more. There was so much unpredictable danger in their future life. Once their identities were discovered, they could be fired or even worse; that is, losing their lives. But they chose to stand out, speaking loud, stunned the world. But for their fearlessness, the ugly fact couldn’t have been disclosed, been spread out, and been to urge the society to face it seriously. Stories of theirs are poor, making me filled with righteous indignation. After reading, I made a self-examination: All of us knew everyone’s equal, and we should be kind to everyone without prejudice. But did we put it into practice actually? If our nation weren’t disadvantaged in international relations, would we look down on the Third World? Is it a distorted prejudice that we pursue the western culture, longing for a blond-hair beauty from there but not a black-hair one from the Southeast? There is so much to list, and to meditate on. However, besides from the serious parts, I’d like to share one funny, somewhat cheerful story in the book. One servant, after being under a long-term awful treatment in her hirer’s villa, was driven beyond the limits of forbearance. She put her own shit in the pie for her hirer! What’s more, she told her hirer while her hirer was enjoying it! Though it wasn’t a correct method for children to learn, it was the greatest one I had heard of as revenge. To me, she could be a sort of heroine! Not only did she dare to do, but she dared to admit her deed. That is awesome! In the age of multiculture and cosmopolitan, we seem to take a giant step towards peace. However, with the tides of fashion and strong individualism, there is an obscure side inside people’s heart. We all talk glibly about that all men are created equal. But it seems to me that all of us are just the echoes. On the one hand, we know the truth; on the other hand, we have our own rule of standards subtly in the mind. That’s really evil, isn’t it? No one discloses the ugly truth so we hide it as usual. Once somebody committs an error, the society must send troops to punish him/her as if others were emissaries of justice. There’s no so-called equality of all time in this world; not to mention the situation between different ancestries. This book made me think of Dr. King, who devoted himself to leading Africa-American Civil Rights Movement. One part of his speech seared into my memory entirely: I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with it’s vicious racists, with it’s governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. Didn’t anyone remember his agitating words? How could we lose sight of our geniueness deeply rooted in the heart? As a matter of fact, there can certainly be no doubt that we can make the things right as long as we face up to the reality and are willing to try. We’re all the residents on the planet. I wonder what would be left if we don’t care about the harmony? Maybe the coldness would be left, the hatred would ramble, and the spring would never come back for good. I’m sure that no one would like something like this to come true. So, Dr. King did it. Skeeter did it. They succeeded. Dr. King can, Skeeter can, so can we! Perhaps we can’t have such influence on this as they did, we can try as much as we can. The aforementioned instances inspired me, and I can tell them to others, changing other’s thoughts if they kept incorrect ideas towards that. Last but not least, The Help is a great book worth reading. We can have tears and laughter together while reading. This is a book full of ruthlessness and warmness. We can find the initial feelings which hided inside the soul, feeling the waves of the mood surging over the mind, pondering long and deeply over the matter. Sincerely, I hope that everyone can read it and really enjoy it.

【100-2 第二名】應外四 張〇儀：Disgrace

Disgrace

參賽者： 張〇儀（應外四）
名次：第二名
書名：Disgrace
得獎作品：

     This is a story of disgrace in post-apartheid South Africa, written by J.M. Coetzee. David Lurie, a Cape Town professor of English, loses everything after having an affair with his own student, Melanie. There is a hearing to help him save his jeopardized reputation and job, but David Lurie is arrogant enough and not willing to accept the deal offered by the committee. He has been assailed by the public; as a result, his reputation sinks out of sight and his job is gone. However, David Lurie himself, dissatisfied with his own lectures to unwilling students, does not seem to care that much. Having caught in a mess, David escapes from his disgrace in the city and moves to his daughter’s farm in Eastern Cape, taking refuge. David’s daughter Lucy, a solid woman and a lesbian, is now leading her life perfectly well in the countryside, seemingly. There is Lucy’s neighbor Petrus, a hardworking farmer, who is black. Although David Lurie thinks at first that Petrus seems to know his place, in time it becomes clear that Petrus wants Lucy’s land and Lucy as one of his wives. Later, an attack is launched against Lucy, raped and impregnated, and David, violently assaulted. Surprisingly, Lucy does not seek for justice and sanction imposed on the rapists, who are also black. Not until then does David Lurie realize the difference already occurred in post-apartheid South Africa. At first, I think Melanie is a victim of David Lurie because his affection, if there is, is obviously not appreciated. David occupies a position of power, a professor, and that is why Melanie does not resist. While they are having sex, Melanie is passive throughout. “All she does is avert herself: avert her lips, avert her eyes,” and “she goes slack, dies within herself for the duration.” We can easily tell how undesired the whole duration is. But then, Melanie starts to know how to take advantage of David, of her own unfortunate. As for David, I don’t think he is a victim of Melanie. From his attitude on the hearing, obviously he does not care about what Melanie says to the committee or how she reacts toward their closeness. He accepts them all. Also, he has made it clear to the committee that he is not sorry and he won’t repent. So, it seems to me that David is the victim of his own desire, something he cannot control, instead of his student Melanie. Animals in the novel are served as the inferior ones, probably black South Africans during apartheid, the colored like Melanie, and now people like David Lurie. At first, David has no sympathy/empathy for the dogs. To some extent, he identifies the animals as black South Africans, the inferior kind: when David finds out the black boy who is peeping at Lucy, he calls him “swine”; also, David thinks what the rapists do is nothing but mating, “marking Lucy like a dog’s urine.” But later he takes on the job as a dog man because he doesn’t want the dogs to bear such disgrace, so I believe it is because he identifies himself as the same kind with them, and there is no such a thing called baas en Klaas (boss and worker in Afrikaans) between him and the dogs. “Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity. Like a dog. Yes, like a dog.” He himself has actually become the inferior kind now. The reason why Lucy does not seek for justice is confusing. David once says, “Perhaps it was not they who produced her: perhaps history had the larger share.” This is probably the foreshadowing about Lucy’s attitude toward what happens followed. According to David, Lucy “wishes to humble herself before history,” “a history of wrong.” It could be apartheid. Lucy herself also says, “I don't want to come back in another existence as a dog or a pig and have to live as dogs or pigs live under us.” She wants to make up for black South Africans for what white people has put them through, so she moves to the village and befriend them, subordinating herself out of her own will. In short, she compromises. While David is unbending, it is too hard for him to accept how the society has changed after apartheid. For example, he doesn’t understand why Petrus can just walk in his daughter’s house and act like he is their same kind. However, I do think David has changed by the end of the novel. This is post-apartheid South Africa. People must accept or adapt, and David does. He surrenders to the past; his sympathy/empathy for the animals grows, and he is learning how to compromise. And I believe that is his transformation, his changes.

【100-2 第一名】企管四A 林〇昇：127 Hours

127 Hours

參賽者：林〇昇（企管四A）
名次：第一名
書名：127 Hours
得獎作品：

     Imagine that you were trapped down in a 150-yard canyon alone with two burritos, less than a liter of water, a cheap imitation of a Leatherman brand multi-tool, a small first aid kit, a video camera, a digital camera and rock climbing gear, and an 800-pound boulder crushed on your hand. Aron Lee Ralston, a graduate from Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado and a mechanical engineering and French student at Carnegie Mellon University. At Carnegie Mellon, he served as a Resident Assistant, studied abroad, and was an active intramural sports participant. He left his job as a mechanical engineer with Intel in 2002 to climb all of Colorado's "fourteeners", or peaks over 14,000 feet high during the winter season. In April 2003, Ralston entered Utah's Bluejohn Canyon only to become trapped when an 800-pound boulder shifted, crushed his hand, and pinned him to the canyon wall. For six days, Ralston struggled to free himself while warding off dehydration and hypothermia. Trapped and facing certain death, Ralston chose a final option that later made him an international sensation: Using a multi-tool, the climber amputated his right arm, and then rappelled to freedom. Very few of us will ever have to make the difficult choices Aron Ralston faced. Even fewer of us will experience being trapped underneath a boulder and be forced to serve our own limb over freedom. It is not difficult to believe that Aron Ralston could be any one of us. When his arm got stuck “between a rock and a hard place” (the title of his book and possibly the first time that expression was meant literally), he tried, in vain, to free himself. After a few days of fruitless effort, Aron’s situation only grew more desperate. He began to reflect, “What a big hero! Coming out here without telling anyone where I was going... Mistake! As the ordeal continued, Ralston began to get delirious. Death seemed to hover him. In a true act of desperation, he took a knife, already dulled from repeated banging on the rock, and cut off his arm. Keep in mind that he still needed to scale down the mountain and hike an additional 16 miles. But as he walked away from the scene, he looked back at Blue John and said, “Thank you.” We are given no further explanation but since the mountain released him when his life was endangered, rather than taking it, we must assume he means “thank you for the experience, for the wisdom gained, the lesson proffered." When we are in the midst of trials and tribulations, we are mostly in survival mode, just putting one foot in front of the other and trying to make it through. But when they are over, if we can find a quiet moment, if we can reflect, perhaps we can discover there was something to learn. There is some way to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our potential. As long as we remain alert and receptive, we may be able to overcome and have a chance for reflection. Aron Ralston endured an ordeal that seems incomprehensible to most of us. It took tremendous courage and determination and strength of will to escape the mountain trap. And given his weakened state, even after all that, his survival was nothing short of miraculous. What a tragedy it would have been if the entire trauma had been for naught. But Aron Ralston is a fortunate young man – not just because he survived, but because he recognized the lessons available for him to learn from this experience while he still had the time and ability to change. Although he continues to climb mountains, he also works as a motivational speaker, doing the best possible thing with such dearly-earned wisdom – sharing it with others. Married with a child, he no longer avoids solitude and he never goes mountain climbing without telling someone where he is going. I don’t know how he survived those 127 hours (the 2 hours spend watching the movie were enough of a harrowing ordeal for me) but that really taught me a great lesson as his determination and courage cheated an opportunity for the Grim Reaper. I have grown, even if it’s something so simple as carrying a better blade while canyoneering, from Aron’s experiences. And I hope his wisdom will help you overcome your own mountain, great or small.