A while back I had to do a bunch of journals on the book In Cold Blood.
I have decided to post several of these journals, they are very incoherent.
Each journal had a passage associated with it, which have not been reproduced here.
#3, Page 20 – The Last to See Them Alive
Perhaps this is a bit of a tangent, but this passage makes me wonder “What makes someone become a life insurance agent?” It must be the most depressing job ever, next to working in a cemetery/crematorium/funeral home. Even if one can claim ignorance of that fact when entering the field, what makes someone want do do that? Are there high-school students who want to sell insurance when they grow up?
#7, Page 65 – Persons Unknown
I tried to read her story, however, she kept using the phrase “hot as Hades,” and I couldn’t take her seriously (does this make me an awful person?). I find the phrase “hot as Hades” to be humerus; a hot hell is a distinctly Christian concept, the Greek Hades was cold, icy. This certainly fits much of the imagery of death, the “cold grip of death,” bodies get cold when they die, and you get the chills when one is scared (exposed to death). It appears that my mind is wandering, I’m going to attribute this to lack of hacking. Relatedly, I should probably finish the book Hackers, (I have to write a review of it, as I got a free “review copy”) I’ll do that as soon as I finish this book.
#15, Page 147-148 – The Corner
It’s funny how the events we build up in our heads end up not being fulfilling as we imagine them to be. Whatever this journal was going to be just got derailed by my recollection of a paper I once read. The paper essentially stated that individuals with depression are the sane people, and that we are all the ones with the disorder. It asserted that we have a condition that causes us to over-estimate how future events will affect us, both good events and bad. Individuals with depression actually function properly, but without the unfounded optimism fount in the rest of us, they fail to be motivated or feel good. If this is correct, it means that the world just sucks. It would seem here that Dewey indeed does not have depression, for he is subject to our condition of falsely inflating gratifying events.