Monday, November 24, 2014
Bewilderment by Fanny Howe
In this essay Fanny Howe introduces us to the word be wilderment. She describes how bewilderment works in our lives specially within our dreams. Bewilderment can be seen as something that has no beginning or end. Sometimes it is hard for us to express our bewilderment because it can cause confusion to the person who we are trying to explain it to. It is important for our lives to have a bit of bewilderment because it allows us as people to find out where they stand in the midst of confusion. For example being somewhere between believing in God or not believing in Him at all. Bewilderment also allows s to see things in different perspectives not just one. Certainty in the other hand is not being lost in ones own confusion but rather knowing what is going on and what will happen. Certainty is something that is important in our lives because it helps us prevent mistakes that are avoidable. If a person pays attention to the clues around him or her that something is not good for them, then they will be certain about it. Certainty can really help us long term wise but at the same time life would be a quite dull if we were always certain about things because we wouldn't feel the thrill that comes with taking risks.
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I also believe that bewilderment means confusion. Being confused in life is something that honestly is just natural which is not always a bad thing. Many times when we get confused it makes our brains actually stop and do work instead of just being on auto pilot. Confusion leads to us to learning more about things we didn't know before. I agree with you when you say that certainty can prevent us from making mistakes but I don't think that it always prevents it. Because nobody is ever completely certain about any situation, it is hard to say that they will always know what to do in each situation. Certainty and bewilderment are both necessary for our daily lives because they are what help us make our daily decisions.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with both of you. Fanny Howe explains to the reader that bewilderment is present in many things such as poetry and dreams. She believes that bewilderment is “like a dream: one continually returning pause on a gyre.”After reading "Bewilderment" I sought to make an understanding of what bewilderment actually is. I believe that bewilderment is an internal struggle within an individual to figure out the confusion that they may be amidst. One of the many things that Howe discusses is dreams and poetry. Every night a dream may come to an individual and upon waking up they may have no sense as to what their dream was. All they know is a few parts of it. Similarly, when reading poetry there may be multiple different meanings that might be part of the poem, but depending on the individual the viewpoints differ. In this world, certainty and bewilderment are necessary because they both go hand in hand with each other. Whereas bewilderment is confusion, certainty is an answer to that bewilderment. It hinders an individual from making mistakes that with only bewilderment may be committed. As human beings we always want a certain answer to everything we don’t like it if there is an open-ended situation because we have trouble trying to figure out exactly what is correct. This is where certainty comes into play; with certainty we always have a “correct” answer which is what we humans like. On the other hand, if bewilderment seizes to exist then no new inventions or ideas will arise. In order to grow as a society and as a modernized world we continuously need to make changes that come from the bewilderment of many. With this the certainty aspect is fulfilled. So you see it is all one big cycle!
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