Sunday, November 29, 2015

Week 13: Literary Speculation

     This week in class we read "The Aquatic Uncle". It was quite a strange little story, but I enjoyed reading it. There are just about a million symbols within this short tale but one of the most prominent ones is the land and water. The water, of course, represents the old ways and traditions of the creatures who live here. The uncle still lives in the water and, therefore, is still stuck in the past. Qfwfq and his family live on the land; this represents a new era of exploration and new ways of living. Qfwfq wants to move into the new age and begin a life with Lll. His uncle, still bogged down by the ways the old times, doesn't support this by any means. Lll is curious though and eventually begins to accept N'ba n'ga's wisdom and life lessons.
     N'ba n'ga's character reminds me of the elderly people of today. Many people dismiss what older people have to say because they "don't know what they're talking about" or they're "starting to lose it". This has always made me sort of sad. While it is true that elderly people may not be able to understand what goes on in today's modern world and adapt to it as deftly as a younger generation can, it in no way means that we should dismiss the things that they try to tell us. I work at a cookie shop in the mall so I see all kinds of people on a daily basis. I can't count the number of times I've seen a group of middle schoolers running around with the grandmother or grandfather that drove them to the mall. In most of these situations, every time the grandparents tries to speak up and join in on the conversation, the kids kind of roll their eyes and say something like "no, Grandma, that's not how it works anymore" or "you don't understand, Grandpa". Even my coworkers roll their eyes when an elderly man or woman comes to the counter and strikes up a conversation whilst paying ("I remember when . . . "). Although I do understand that these conversations can get boring after a while, there's still a lot of valuable life lessons we can learn talking with an older person; after all, it was a lot harder for people back then. If we just take a moment to listen to what someone's saying and have an open mind, like Lll did while listening to N'ba n'ga's rants ad stories, we could learn some pretty priceless things.

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