April Flowers Bring Pymalion

It's spring, and what a way to start off the new season with flowers and an image make-over. Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, is about a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, in Victorian England whose "kerbstone English will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days" (Shaw, Act I). Luckily, Professor Henry Higgins comes to Eliza's aid as a supportive patron.

 . . . [she] utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere—no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

Isn't it great to have a loving patron who will compliment you and be concerned about your welfare. I certainly wish I could have someone as understanding as Professor Higgins to "help me talk good," and could "pass [me] off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party," or "could even get [me] a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English" (Shaw, Act I).

 

Courtesy of Goodreads.com

The Alchemist

I'm not that far into The Alchemist, but I LOVE it! I like Paolo Coelho's message/theme, that we must search for our "Personal Legend." As a recent graduate who feels lost, or not sure about what to do with my life (when I can do anything I want becasue I'm really not tied down to anything), it really speaks to me, and has caused me to rethink what I want to do with my life.

It blew my mind when he introduced the Old Man as  Melchizedek, the King of Salem. Melchizedek was barely mentioned in the Old Testament when Abram (Abraham) paid his tithes to him--the Old man asked the boy to give him one-tenth of his flock. I was even more amazed when the Old Man opened his cape to reveal the breastplate with two stones . . . the Urim and Thummim--also barely mentioned in the Bible--which have a lot of meaning to us. I wonder if other people reading this book will stop and think about the significance of the Urim and Thummim (as seer stones), or just pass over it.

"It's a book that says the same thing almost all the others books in the world say. It describes people's inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes sthe world's greatest lie."

"What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised.

"It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie." (p.18)