Relationships with Oneself

Our readings for this week dealt with the relationship that a person has with themselves.  We read Walt Whitman’s [I celebrate myself, and sing myself], Emily Dickinson’s [My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun-], and Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths.”  These readings all had a lot to do with how a person sees and feels about themselves.  In Whitman’s [I celebrate myself, and sing myself], the narrator of the poem is telling the reader how he or she feels about his or her impact on the world and how this can be related to everyone else on the planet.  In Dickinson’s [My Life had stood-a loaded gun-], the narrator compares the emotions that control his or her life to a loaded gun.  This metaphor helps the reader to better understand and relate to the emotions that the narrator is experiencing.  In Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths,” the narrator must decide between his own goals and those of his ancestors.  This requires the narrator to have an understanding of himself and what he is willing to sacrifice to reach his goal.  In the end, the narrator sacrifices himself as well as the memory of his ancestors in order to achieve his goal.