"Nothing ever taught us to be islands"

In my modern American literature class we have been studying literature from 1914-1960. This has honestly been one of my favorite classes. The professor was amazing and I absolutely love modern literature. I went into this class expecting to study all of my favorites (cummings, Frost, Pound) but ended up studying some writers that I was not familiar with at all. One of the most ironic things of the class was that we ended up reading Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In ninth grade our English class read this book...and my friends ended up making fun of it the whole time. For this round though, I loved it! Who knew a book about a society comprised entirely of women could be so much more interesting when you're twenty as compared to when you're fifteen?!

But hands down the best thing I read this semester for this class was "Gay Chaps at the Bar" by Gwendolyn Brooks. At the end of the semester when we got to choose what we wanted to write our final research papers on, I easily chose this work. My professor said I was the only one in the class to choose this work. I was shocked, SHOCKED, to hear that! And for the record, this is not about a homosexual drinking spot. The title refers to WWII soldiers and their return from war, trying to be happy and assimilate into American life again.

"Gay Chaps at the Bar" is a collection of twelve sonnets about black soldiers during WWII. In my paper I talked about how the soldiers in the poems were constantly referencing two wars, the war abroad in the fight for freedom, as well as the war in America for racial tolerance. This was one of the most interesting papers I have written in a long time. I could go on about it for a while, but I won't because that's not what this post is about! Rather, this is about my favorite line from Brooks's work..."nothing ever taught us to be islands."

Chills when I read that line. "Nothing ever taught us to be islands." In our world we are taught how to interact, to become what people expect from us, to show that we stand a chance in this world full of billions of people. But there is nothing that teaches us to be alone. In elementary school the teachers tell you to go play with your friends at recess, to be a kid, to have fun. But they never teach you how to be by yourself. To be honest, I realized more this year than ever that I have never learned how to be alone. No one ever took the time to teach me. This line troubled me for some time. Why would everyone in the world be so cruel, so ignorant to the loneliness that is so adamant? However, I found my answer a few weeks later as we studied another work in our class.

We discussed an essay by Antonio Benitez-Rojo called "The Repeating Island." This essay addresses the idea of the "chaos theory." This is a complex theory, far too complicated for my mind to understand so I'll give you the basics of what I know about it. This theory basically says that there is order in apparently random events if you can look at them closely enough. This discussion got us on to the "butterfly effect." The butterfly effect theorizes that the flap of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world could eventually completely alter the weather in another part of the world. Are you still with me? Keep trying for just another minute, there's a point here. The butterfly effect led us briefly to the discussion of "six degrees of separation." This one is easy enough, everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by six people. So I know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who is a politician in Brazil or whatever.

Now, to the point. "Nothing ever taught us to be islands." Why is this? After discussing these three theories, I had the answer. "Nothing ever taught us to be islands" because we are not meant to be islands. These arguments are all in favor of everyone being connected in the smallest, most detailed ways. But these tiny interactions, the most insignificant connections keep us from becoming islands. It isn't natural for us to be islands. We are human beings, not rocks, not land masses. We speak, learn, teach, laugh, cry. We feel for each other and with each other. We do not feel alone because whether we realize it or not we are not alone. We are connected to every other person on the earth.

To wrap things up here is a little number by Simon and Garfunkel that my professor felt so inclined to share with the class. "And a rock feels no pain; and an island never cries." Why we were created to be what we are, to feel pain and cry.