Good Fall
A Good Fall
The word Freedom has a different connotation in every part of the world, to have freedom means to have certain characteristics. These characteristics would be having the Third Eye, self-control, humility, and the ability to be able to overcome problems with a strategized plan. In the short story collection A Good Fall by Ha Jin, each story puts characters in dissimilar positions where they show whether or not they have the characteristics that define freedom. “A Composer and His Parakeet”, “ In The Crossfire”, “The Beauty”, and “Temporary Love” all involve characters that seem to be trapped in a current relationship, but for different reasons. Learned Helplessness is a disease, in which you close your heart and mind to your strong self and settle for your weak self-resulting in shame, several characters are diagnosed with this disease. The Third Eye can be defined as self-awareness, it allows us to interpret the current situation we are in, and analyze the good from the bad. It emphasizes the bigger, long-term picture over the short-term and helps make decisions out of reason rather emotion. A person with the third eyes exercises discipline over desire. Humility is simply learning from our mistakes to make us stronger and wiser. Fanlin from the story “A Composer and his Parakeets” shows traits of having freedom. His girlfriend Supriya owns a mute parakeet Bori; she leaves Bori with Fanlin as she goes off to Thailand for her job as an actress. At the beginning Fanlin disliked the bird because he believed one of Supriya’s ex-boyfriends gave her the bird. Over time he grows a heart and starts bonding with the bird, he lets him into his music studio in which the bird was not allowed in at first. Fanlin was preparing to write for an Opera event that was coming up. Weeks went
on and the bird went everywhere Fanlin did, until one day by the beach the bird flies away and almost drowns and Fanlin throws himself into the water to save it. Bori would
The word Freedom has a different connotation in every part of the world, to have freedom means to have certain characteristics. These characteristics would be having the Third Eye, self-control, humility, and the ability to be able to overcome problems with a strategized plan. In the short story collection A Good Fall by Ha Jin, each story puts characters in dissimilar positions where they show whether or not they have the characteristics that define freedom. “A Composer and His Parakeet”, “ In The Crossfire”, “The Beauty”, and “Temporary Love” all involve characters that seem to be trapped in a current relationship, but for different reasons. Learned Helplessness is a disease, in which you close your heart and mind to your strong self and settle for your weak self-resulting in shame, several characters are diagnosed with this disease. The Third Eye can be defined as self-awareness, it allows us to interpret the current situation we are in, and analyze the good from the bad. It emphasizes the bigger, long-term picture over the short-term and helps make decisions out of reason rather emotion. A person with the third eyes exercises discipline over desire. Humility is simply learning from our mistakes to make us stronger and wiser. Fanlin from the story “A Composer and his Parakeets” shows traits of having freedom. His girlfriend Supriya owns a mute parakeet Bori; she leaves Bori with Fanlin as she goes off to Thailand for her job as an actress. At the beginning Fanlin disliked the bird because he believed one of Supriya’s ex-boyfriends gave her the bird. Over time he grows a heart and starts bonding with the bird, he lets him into his music studio in which the bird was not allowed in at first. Fanlin was preparing to write for an Opera event that was coming up. Weeks went
on and the bird went everywhere Fanlin did, until one day by the beach the bird flies away and almost drowns and Fanlin throws himself into the water to save it. Bori would