Was It Heaven? Or Hell?

The Mark Twain I read was titled “Was It Heaven? Or Hell?” The basic premise of the story was that there’s a housheld of four women - Margaret, her daughter Helen, and Margaret’s aunts, Hannah and Hester. All the women are very devout Christians and absolutle hate lies. The two aunts are shocked when a doctor that examines Margaret lies and tells her she’s doing well, but explains that everyone lies, without exception.

The aunts are unwilling to accept what he says, but when Margaret’s daughter also contracts the fever they start lying and telling Maragaret she’s perfectly healthy, although they feel extremely guilty. Both mother and daughter die, and then it gets really fucked up - an angel asks the aunts, Hannnah and Hester, to repent their lies. They both explain that they were deceptive to keep the dying woman happy. The angel returns and decrees whether they’ll go to Heaven or Hell, than the narrator asks: “Was it Heaven? Or Hell?” and it ends.

So yeah, pretty strange. The story is basically a parable by Twain, who seems to be saying that lying is natural, and that even if it is a sin, good can come out of it. All in all this is similar to “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg” in that he’s pointing out the same kind of hypocrisy. “Was It Heaven? Or Was It Hell?” definitely belongs with the whole “angry and bat-shit crazy” portion of Mark Twain’s life. It’s somewhat amusing and I agree with his point, but overall I didn’t enjoy it because of the whole…. you know, bat-shit crazy thing.

Little Murders

The clips of this film we watched in class had me quite interested. Liked we talked about, the story of Little Murders touched on the theme of "urban craziness" or whatever you want to call it. The book Fight Club, and the movies Se7en and Taxi Driver, all express a similar sentiment: our modern, city-living mentality is so chaotic you have to be a little funny in the head just to survive. Being a comic book geek, it reminds me of something the Joker once said: "If I weren't crazy, I'd be insane!"

I want to watch the entire movie, because this particular theme really interests me. I'm not sure why, but if I had to guess I'd say because we're reminded of terrible things everyday: you can't turn on the TV or get on the internet without hearing about the latest clusterfuck of disease, war, or political bullshit. It's the reason so many people are apathetic. That's why humor is so important -- as they say, laughter is the best medicine!

On a general note, I think it would be best if we all added each other to our blog rolls so it will be easier to see what we're all writing. Not that I know how to do that, mind you.

Hey.