Portfolio

Cover Letter

     The series of essays I wrote, contain a short informational piece about the Realism art movement, which deals with a part of the career I am pursuing, a biography that tells the story of someone very close to me, and a review which describes my experience reading Blindness.

     The informational piece was written to illustrate my focused interest into what I am passionate about. Art is a big part of my life. It is what make up half of my future. I wrote the second paper, the biography, because I know the struggles many go through and the vast injustice and discrimination hidden within the lines of our laws.  The last essay, was the accumulation of all our class time and discussions about the book.

     At the time of writing all the papers, it seemed like a never ending task when writing for so long. Yet, I was surprised when most of the words just came flowing out through my fingers. I have always struggled to write any kind of essays, but when it came to all these three papers, I felt like I had enough material to work with and start writing what my head contained.

     The struggles to write the first paper were somewhat more difficult due to the lack of knowledge for what type of writing the professor was looking for, but writing the other two papers were easier after reading all the guidelines. At times, the thought of writing the three essays became overwhelming so I thought about writing everything little by little until I finished everything. Also, I always walked with a little notebook in my bag. This way, every free time I had and every thought that came to my mind would be written down right away.

     Lastly, when writing the biography there were some difficulties finding the right information. At first I would find something that was related to my topic, but at the same time, that would direct me towards other information related to that but further away from what I was looking for, so little by little it led me to somewhere I did not want to end up.

When I wrote the review, it was not very difficult for me because I knew the story of the book and I had feedback from the experiences of my classmates. Also, I had an idea of how a review should be.

A1 Short Story:

Realism Movement

     One of the artistic movements that was much more meaningful in relation to economic and political history is the Realism movement. The Realism period lasted for about 20 years, from 1850-1870. It initiated as a response towards the Romantic Movement (1789-1850) before the French Revolution, where artists depicted people as happy and worry free, while singing and dancing in meadows. The Realism period in painting was not just about grasping people's expressions and the exact shadows' colors on an image and then putting it all on a canvas, it was about setting the right atmosphere and elements to transmit feelings of melancholy and sympathy from the viewer towards the subject at hand.

     In this painting by Jean-Honore Fragonard, The swing, there is this garden that looks much like a utopia. Here, a girl is pushed in the swing by a man who is barely noticeable due to the trees' shadows. On the left of the painting, lies the girl's lover whose cheeks express excitement at the sight of the girl's legs. In this image, the shadows and shapes have very realistic qualities but they fail to show real emotion. Historically, it shows nothing about the circumstances they are going through. It becomes only a pretty painting.
         In reality, people were suffering and working from the beginning of their puberty until far into their advanced age. When the revolution was proven to not show the results that the working class community needed, the elite did not realize how bad the world had turned for people outside their circle; this is when artists like Gustave Courbet began expressing the unheard voice of the poor.

     Here is one of Courbet’s famous paintings, The Stone Breakers, 165 x 257cm. The artist sets the mood with this color theme to transmit feelings of sadness, misery, and sorrow.
This painting is set around midday, yet the shadows on the mountain rest right upon them to represent the obscure and depressing life the working class deals with in a daily basis. There is a presence of a boy who is barely hitting puberty. This boy is trying to carry a clearly heavy basket full of broken rocks with the help of his knee. He wears a pair of wore down old shoes, socks with holes in them, a ripped shirt, and a muddy pairs of pants with only one strap doing the work of two. Next to him, there is an old man who is doing the even heavier work of breaking the rocks with no kind of protection on his face. Painting with these kind of dimensions in the romantic period, before the revolution, where only for portraits of the kings, aristocrats, and palaces, but Courbet’s painting was made in this size to give more focus and significance to the problems of the poor.

     The Realism movement differs from what people call realistic now, because Realism is a period in time that give way to a domino effect throughout many people in every socioeconomic class. It began after the people took charge over their own politics and made the aristocrats disappear, which left artists, who were employed by aristocrats, out on the streets. At the same time, working class people and poor people were left with the bare minimum. What people call realistic is the sole meaning of a painting being a still-life, where every shadow cast and every detail on the set up is present in the painting.

 Biography A2:

Justice For All?

“Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” should apply towards all human beings, not just the ones our state cares the most about because they are legally allowed to stay in this country. Our politicians, at the time of making new rules and regulations, forget this nation's history. They forget who formed it, and why is this one of the strongest, most reliable nations in the world.

What first comes to mind when someone from another country hears “United States” are thoughts of opportunities, opportunities that are far from being easily obtained in other countries. This country, “the land of the free”, does not seem to have as much freedom as what people expect. Furthermore, the freedom to have the opportunities that this country offers, are not easily obtained either. But it seems that the legal immigration status that not everybody is lucky to obtain, can change people's lives.

In the case of my brother, Joe, he has an illegal immigrant status. He never had high hopes for his future since he came to this country because all he saw was the people who came to this country could only make something of themselves by having papers. When he came to this country at 14, he had just started puberty. At this age everyone goes through a rebellious phase, where very often, we do not think about the consequences to our actions. He was no exception. In his first four years here, our parents worked harder than ever, and with their noticeable absence from home, Joe had the opportunity to do anything he pleased.

My brother used to get into great amounts of trouble. Joe fought with anyone who tried to take advantage of him, tried to provoke him, make fun of him, etc. Academically, he did great. Though his teachers loved him, they always complained about him acting up in class and being absent for them. After so many suspensions from school, he got thrown out of it. At his new school, there was not much change on his part.

The one and only thing he loved to do in his teenage years was driving. It was the only thing that could calm him down when his anger took over him. So, when it was time to take the driver's ed class he aced it. He aced the test also. Yet, all the effort he went through to pass the test was in vain. The day he brought the proof of the exam to get his permit, it was denied to him because he did not have papers. His motivation and his hopes to fight for a good future were shattered. He did no longer see any reason for trying to have a good life if the government would not allow him to have something so mundane as a driver's license.

Since that day, everything went from bad to worse. He kept getting into fights and missing classes, so the school held him back a whole year. One day Joe was found with cartons of cigarettes in his school locker. He confessed that he was selling them to other students, and was thrown out of school for the last time.

A couple of years later, he started going out with a sickly jealous girl who was about seven years older than him. They got into a discussion in a train station where she immediately tries to hit Joe, but he grabs her hands. Right then, the police come and accused him of trying to hit the girl, and though the girl dropped the charges, his file with the police was permanent. Some time later, the police found him with a pipe for smoking marijuana. Which brought him problems later.

When he broke up with this girl after four years of being together, he decided to get his life back on track. A few months later, he found a better girl. Joe found a steady job, and moved out to start a new live with his fiancée, but his happiness did not last long. Three months after he moved out, he found out his fiancée was pregnant; yet, that short-lived bliss lasted less than a month. She suffered a miscarriage, though the doctors never found a reason for it. My brother tried to keep his strength to not give up on everything he had accomplished lately with his new view on life. It was hard for him not to go back to the life he had, but he still made it through. About four or five months later, his fiancée was pregnant again. The pregnancy seemed to be safe this time.

Two months later Joe's world began crumbling down once more. He regretted his past actions that day more than ever, all the consequences of all that he had done in the past came rushing back to haunt him. It was a regular summer day. There where a few clouds in the sky, enough to slightly cover someone from the burning sun, but not from the intense heat and humidity that lived in the atmosphere. These temperatures did not exactly harmonize this hot-tempered person. That day, his life and the life of everyone around him changed. The fourth of July, he woke up like any other day and got himself to the train. When he left the train, he noticed he needed some change for the taxi that would bring him to the doorstep of his job, so he went into the store where everything happened.

Joe went into the pharmacy store hoping to buy a deodorant to obtain some change. He walked up to the aisle and grabbed the deodorant. He put it up to his face to open the cap and smell the product, and at that moment the manager called out to him. As he turned his head, the manager began shouting while transmitting his anger throughout the store, accusing him of stealing the deodorant. At the same time, he threatened to call the police, to what Joe replied, “go ahead, I'm not nothing anything wrong”. The manager approached him and pushed him as a sign of provoking a fight. Joe tried to calm his anger, which felt so difficult like he was trying to put out a wildfire burning within him. The manager accused him once more while pushing him. Moments later, a security guy who worked at the store obviously sided with the manger and both began to take Joe to the floor, but he fought back against both. At that moment Joe's anger took over and he began to injure both of these people to protect himself. Of course, right at that moment, the police entered the store.

When all of this happened, the cameras were on and there was evidence that he did not do anything wrong, but the authorities did not move a finger to show the evidence. Joe spent almost four whole months in jail, in which the second one his fiancée had a second miscarriage, and since he did not have legalization to work in this “free country”, he had to pay two separate obstacles to be permitted to leave jail: criminal and immigration detention center.

The criminal charges could be resolved by: pleading guilty (even if innocent) and paying bail, or staying in jail for as long as took for the case to be won/lost. One of the options for the immigration problem was to voluntarily leave the country, though he may not be permitted to come back to United States for another ten years, be deported, or pay bail to have a chance of getting his documents in order. My family decided to pay both bails and deal with the legalization later.

At the end October, Joe got out of jail. All his strength to better himself stayed in the cell where he lived for four months, because he knew he had to jump through giant hoops to get to where he wanted. First, he needed to get a high school diploma or a GED. Second, a close legalized relative had to help him get his papers fixed. Third, the income of whoever would help him get his papers had to be sufficient to maintain both, according to state’s standards. Even after completing these demands, there was no certainty of his stay in this country.

On November, there was another baby on the way. This miniature reason was enough to bring him back to life. He decided to marry his fiancée and submit the application for his legalization. His judge is currently scheduling hearings to check on Joe’s legalization process every two to three months. But he still has to deal with the financial hardships by having lawyer bills, house bills, and expenses for the baby, while at the same time he is not legally allowed to work.

As it has been proven with Joe’s case, this country’s laws are going against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948. This document states, “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status”. In this document, we clearly comprehend that human rights are for everyone, all human beings, not just for the ones who have a piece of paper granting them permission issued by some bureaucrat.

All of these bulldozers that illegal immigrants have to jump over are unnecessary waste of money for both, the state and the people. In the case of the detainees in the immigration centers, their processes of extradition, deportation, or release are held back, which, at the same time, results in the growing amount of detainees in the facilities. Writer Reena Arya from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU) states, “The budget for the Department of Homeland Security appropriates $90 million in new funding for increased detention beds and detention and removal officers”. The whole process for those who have not done any major crimes, if any, is plain inconvenient and shows no good ethics by the state.

The state treats illegal immigrants as immoral criminals who gain pleasure by violating the law, as if the set of laws governing our every move was set perfectly right to change the society we live on. No. These laws were set by a group of pretentious people who think they own a country, and because of the power they have, they can create any regulations that will shape this country into their idea of a good nation. The leaders of this country have never stopped and will never stop to think about what kind of life and struggles do legal and illegal immigrants have to go through to get to this country or to stay in it. The only subject in their minds is what kind of impression do other nations have over this one.

In James Queally’s article in NJ.com, there is a case that shows how little our free country cares about its residents. This is the case of legal resident Garfield Gayle from Jamaica, 53 years old. He was detained in 2012 for being convicted in 1995 of possession of marijuana. Gayle has been incarcerated since the beginning of 2012. Staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights project, Michael Tan displays a genuine thoughtfulness towards Gayle’s family integrity, especially his grandchildren, when he states, “A very important person is missing from their lives. They notice that Mr. Gayle isn’t there at the end of the school day”. In Gayle’s situation, we undoubtedly see the carelessness of this nation’s laws. The government does not show any remorse for the broken families that its rules divide.

The government might want to regulate these laws as a smoke screen to cover what they really have planned. The government enforces some laws, like the ones in detentions centers, where according to Homeland Guantanamos FAQ page, “Almost half the people in detention have never committed a crime and the rest committed a crime long ago, but already served time, or paid the fine. They are all in detention in non-criminal custody for violating immigration law”, to make the “patriots” of this country believe that they actually want to keep immigrants from coming, and most plans to keep them away have not been finished, but all of this for what? A very strong option is that most politicians just want to please the people who complain about overpopulation and economy doing worse because of illegal immigrants, yet our government knows that immigrants are needed to keep away from the collapse of the country’s economy.

Here, PhD Raul Hinojosa, professor of political economy at the University of California, talked about the effects of the illegal immigrant consuming market. He argues, “We've seen that 90% of the wages that the undocumented population gets are spent inside the U.S. Remittances are sent abroad, but that only represents about 10% of immigrants' income. The numbers are becoming quite huge. We estimate about $50 billion dollars in remittances this year. That means that total consumptive capacity remaining in the U.S. is $400 billion to $450 billion”. In his argument, we undoubtedly see that immigrants make a great positive impact towards this nation's economy. Anyone with minor knowledge in the matter, could surely confirm that the government only tries to cover up its real intentions with laws that affect innocent people's lives.

For example, the writer of the article Illegal Immigrants spurn needed benefits, demonstrates the state's economical benefits by letting undocumented immigrants stay in this country by stating, “They pay sales taxes, federal income taxes, Social Security taxes, taken right out of their paycheck, sent right to the federal government... Social Security is about to go broke, but thanks to the illegal aliens, there's presently $345 billion in the Social Security fund, which is helping to keep it afloat”. Here he disintegrates what many people may think. Undocumented people have to give away their money to the government every time they receive their paycheck, but at the end of the day, they cannot claim their benefits such as Medicaid, social security, and many are scared to claim worker's compensation when they are injured in their place of work because they do not have papers. If illegal immigrants become unemployed, there will be no unemployment money to fall back on. If they have low income, they cannot apply for welfare. If they want to have a professional job by going to college, most schools will not accept them, and the ones that do, will charge twice the normal tuition with no chance of financial aid. They will not be able to have a car or house to their name. They will have no chance at a better future.

The freedom this country is so proud of does not meet the Human Rights Declaration, because the justice set in this country only seems to apply to a select few, who own a little piece of paper that decides whether they have the opportunity to have whatever they want or to be obligated to conform into whatever set of laws is carelessly set for them.

Works Cited

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1948.

Arya, Reena. "Denying Justice to NJ's Immigrants." ACLU.org. ACLU., n.d. Web. 29 Feb. 2013.

Queally, James. "ACLU lawsuit fights mandatory jail time for immigration detainees." NJ.com. N.p., 15 Nov. 2012. Web. 29 Feb. 2013.

Spivey, Crissy. "FAQ." Homeland Guantanamo: The untold story of immigrant detention in the U.S.. Breakthrough, 2008. Web. 29 Feb. 2013.

Grow, Brian, and Patricia O'Connell. "Online Extra: "A Massive Economic Development Boom"." Editorial. BusinessWeek.com 17 July 2005: 19 pars. Web. 10 May 2013.

Johnson, Alex; Albornoz, Marian “Illegal immigrants spurn needed benefits.” nbcnews.com. 18 July 2008. NBCNews. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

Dow, Mark. American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. Berkeley And Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004. Print.

 

Review A3:

Blindness

Writer, Jose Saramago illustrated the beginning of the Blindness by defining the noises and actions of people on a very transited street. He proceeds by telling us of about a man in his car who did not start to drive when the light turned green in front of him, then he keeps elaborating the scene as various people surround the car out of curiosity. When the driver says that he has gone blind, Saramago describes the man’s desperation and angst as he starts seeing everything white. Subsequently, a man comes and volunteers to take the driver home. Once they are in the blind man’s apartment, we are able to perceive the volunteer’s real intentions.

Moments after the volunteer leaves, the blind man’s wife gets home and made him realize that the keys to his car were not returned. The wife, in the mean time, calls the nearest ophthalmologist in the area. They both arrive to the doctor’s office and see a girl with dark glasses, an old man with an aye patch, and a little boy accompanied by his mother. The doctor’s assistant lets the blind man and his wife go before everyone else into the examination room.

When the doctor takes a look at the anatomy of the blind man’s eye, he doesn’t find any imperfections in it. The patient and his wife leave the office to go back home. Next, the doctor becomes so curious about the blindness of the man that he spends all night reading books find the answer to this rare case.

The doctor finally falls asleep at dawn on top of his desks, and when he wakes up minutes later, he sees everything white. He walks up to his bed trying to not wake his wife up. When the sun comes up in the horizon, his wife gets up to make breakfast having no clue of what has happened. The doctor gets up and walks to the bathroom where his wife brings him a cup of coffee. He tells her that he’s gone blind. He, later, makes the right calls to report the suspected infectious blindness.

In the meantime, the rest of the patients who were in the doctor’s office and the car thief started to go blind one by one. Later, they all go to an insane asylum, where the infected are contained, and are separated from the rest of society, yet they meet the newly blind patients as they arrive. In this asylum, the new residents have no clean water, no clothes, cleaning supplies, appropriate lighting, or sufficient food rations. Furthermore, a message from the government is played daily, which contained the instructions toward any emergency or daily life issues. This message said that the soldiers would not come to the aid of the blind people in case of a fire, a fight, or death of anyone in the asylum. The blind people were told to bury their dead if there were any, be responsible for any personal problems that might surface, that the food would be delivered by the soldiers, and that if the blind people approached the gate without permission of the guards, they will be shot at on the spot.

On the following days, more than a hundred blind people who had contact with the infected come into the asylum. One of the wards became the governing one. In this ward, there was a man who decided to keep all the food for himself in exchange of valuables, and later, for women.

The women in the asylum were pressured by most of the men to sell their dignity for food. Most women did not want to do it, but after only one of them volunteered, the rest of them accepted. When it was a group’s turn to give away their bodies, the criminals' leader is killed.

Shortly after, there was a fire that started in the criminals’ ward. Many of the blind people were killed in the angry embraces of the fire. This tragedy pushed the blind people to go to the gate, there, they found out that the guards were gone. When they leave the asylum, the whole civilization had gone to the ground. Any form of government there was before, is gone now.

For the rest of the story, they decide to stay in the doctor’s apartment. In an occasion, some of the characters go into a church to rest where the eyes of all the statues and painting of saints painted with white paint or cover with a white bandage, except for that of a woman who had her eyes taken out and put into a silver platter. Towards the end of the story, people start seeing again.

The ending of the story appeared to be one of the writer’s last efforts to finish the book without much care about the contents anymore, because out of nowhere, people are able to see again for no reason, but coincidentally, they all got it back after the people see blind statues and the paintings in the church.

When I finished reading the whole book I noticed that all the events that happened were too obvious also. I knew everything that was going to happen with every chapter of the book, and I was fearful that the ending would turn out as I thought (with no explanation for anything), and it did.

On the other hand, it was a good symbolic work criticizing our blind world, blind to what is in front of our eyes, blind to injustice committed in our surroundings, and blind to our sense of unity towards others. Blindness is a great book if people would want to be entertained for a while because it is greatly narrated, but as for the story itself, there is very little motivation to reread the book. The writer Jose Saramago turned the resolution of the story into the weak part of the book due to the lack of closure. Everyone wants to know the reason of the white blindness. It leaves the reader unsatisfied in a way. At the beginning of the book, the story started to develop in a way that made the reader think the timeline throughout the whole story would be richer and filled with more adventure. The one element that made the story very appealing was the much vivid words the writer uses to describe each scenario the characters walk through. Also, he never gives names to any of the characters, which made the reader have a sense of disconnection towards the characters in the book, but at the same time, they were easily relatable because they were referred to by their profession.

Usually, the great hunger for knowing the cause of everything makes me want to finish the story even if it starts to get boring, yet after reading this book, the author did not even satisfy my hunger for knowledge. When the story ends with people getting their sight back, the writer left me with an uneasy feeling of having been ripped off for some reason, but if Saramago decided to write down a reason for the blindness, the book would probably have lost the essence of the meaning for the story. The readers may lose focus about what the writer wants to leave in the reader's head. He wants to leave the reader thinking about the reason for the book's existence.