Blackberry, Treo, Razr: A Plague on all of you

Following traditions could possibly be dangerous

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/488145
     
     Both the article “Women buried alive in ‘honour’ killings” and Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” present the theme of the dangers of blindly following traditions. Traditions are respected and followed in both societies and their attempt to maintain them has taken away the lives of innocent human beings. In the short story “The Lottery”, the importance of traditions is well displayed. Tessie Hutchinson, for instance, is executed by her fellow villagers as well as her family because she is the victim who received the slip of paper with the black dot. The one with this slip of paper must be stoned according to traditions in the village. In comparison, in the news article “Women buried alive in ‘honour’ killings”, southwestern tribesmen buried and shot four women because their decision of choosing a husband went against traditions. These women simply want to choose their own lives, not have tribal elders do it for them. However, in this society, traditions must be obeyed and followed. By no means would taking the life of an innocent individual be tolerated or accepted in any community. However, in these societies, it is because of their great respect for traditions that has caused them to murder faultless individuals. Furthermore, both societies see no wrong in murder.  For example, in ‘The Lottery’, even though practices are forgotten as it passed down from generation to generation, everyone still understands and accepts the main concept -  every year, one must die for the good of the crops. To quote the author “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.” All the villagers, including the children know that the chosen person must be stoned, they even prepared for it ahead of time by gathering stones. They are all blinded by traditions, and probably do not even know they are committing murder. In fact, the constant killings have become a part of the town’s identity. Similarly, in the news article, the tribesmen think that they are doing what is best for society. Yet, when you think about it, they are taking away the lives of innocent people. They are nothing but cold blooded murders but they do not realize this because they are too caught up with tradtions. Others in the community also support the decisions of the tribesmen. For instance, “These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them," said Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents the Baluchistan province, he further goes on and says "Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.” He feels as if the Tribesmen are not to blame, they were just trying to protect the long lasting traditions. Each society does not realize the trouble they have caused because traditions seem much more important. In addition, although a human being was put to death, there were no punishments for the killers. They got away with murder with the excuse of following traditions. For instance, in the short story, everyone took part in the execution of Tessie Hutchinson and no one was considered to be guilty. Since all the villagers followed this tradition yearly, killing was the norm and everyone accepted it. Someone could be punished only if they refused to be stoned, however, no one would be punished if they wanted to take part in stoning. In the news article however, the tribesmen were not punished as well because they had so much support behind them. Nilofar Bakhtiar, minister of women’s affairs, was completely full of shock and pushed for legislation calling perpetrators to be punished.  It is simply injustice for someone to get away with such cruelty, who knows how the future would be if this were to continue. All in all, in the short story ‘The Lottery’ and the newspaper article “Women buried alive in ‘honour’ killings” both display the theme of the risks of following traditions without understanding its consequences. 

Ice Ice Baby

This song "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice is not one of my favourite songs, although it does have a catchy tune. When I played this song, however, it brought back memories of grade nine english class. My teacher had played this song and made our class fill in the blanks to a lyric sheet she provided us with. It was a listening test and it counted towards our final mark. The song went by so fast that we ended up listening to it six times. By the third or fourth time, we were all crowded around the CD player. This was, by far, one of the best yet hardest tests I have done.

How it all started.

As the school days go by fairly fast, homework and assignments must be completed on time. Although this may be a stressful time for students, I think we should all look on the bright side of all situations. This blog of mine is an ISU that will updated with new blog post assignments over the course of the semester.This assignment allows us to express our creativity skills and that is what I like about it!