I AM ALIVE
- Thread starter MangaDex
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Writer must have wanted to share his boredom and hatred of life.
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and thats the reason why, i still keep everything until now, however, some items just had to go, like for example my favourite pillow for almost a decade, i used it so much between my legs until it got separated into half, with the sheet connecting the two parts, of course i changed the sheets but the pillow was getting worse and worse, i had to throw it away, sad times, i miss my pillow ;(
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@Pokari Late response here, but I wanted to say that I find the moral to be quite well-expressed.
I Am Alive is very similar to the children's story of The Little Red Hen, who plants wheat and gathers other ingredients to make bread, asking other animals for help and receiving none. When her hard work culminates in a loaf of bread and the other animals ask for a share, she tells them they get as much bread as they contributed work, which is to say, none.
In terms of the social events depicted, I Am Alive is something of a sequel to The Little Red Hen (TLRH). Roughly speaking, the TLRH's events map up to and end where the boy enters college. The animals and the pencil have spent this time sponging off the success of a more industrious individual. I Am Live then continues as TLRH might have, were it longer. When the boy switches to a pen, the pencil goes on expecting her (and I contradict the translation of "his" because her attitude is depicted by a spurned woman) acclaim to continue, which overshadows any realization of the reality that circumstances have changed around her; that college submissions must be in pen, and that this truth is independent of the boy's or her wants.
When the boy intends to go on using her in the less award-winning, but still useful, act of studying, the pencil makes herself useless to spite the boy. Maybe the boy had kept her due to sentiment, or because he didn't want to buy more pencils. But by refusing to even act as a pencil, she throws away yet another reason for her to stay around. Her spite proves utterly counterproductive.
In the trash, we see a more pessimistic side of the wider situation. The soda can was purpose-built to be drained and discarded, perhaps roughly analogous to seasonal workers or people who lost the genetic lottery. His presence in the story seems to be an acknowledgement that not everyone who ends up at rock bottom could have averted their problems with hard work and good attitude (whereas the hen story limits itself to faulting the animals for their laziness); some folks just aren't made to last in society, or terrible circumstances squash good people flat. The can even accepts his lot, seeing the trash as his place now that he holds no soda (which is an awful thing to consider, but brutally honest on his part and not an entirely unheard-of attitude.) The pencil scorns the trash's inferiority, believing she does not belong there.
In truth, perhaps she doesn't. But she certainly put herself there. Unlike the can, she was made to be ever-giving. But she had tied her belief in her worth to another individual's accomplishments, even though her involvement was merely as a necessary but replaceable component. So much so that when circumstances betrayed her, she made the boy a target for her spite. And in doing so, she reached down into her greatest quality, her ever-givingness, and destroyed it. She would never have been shaved into uselessness as a wooden pencil would be. She would never have run out of eraser or lead as long as the boy replenished her. But she willfully took on mechanical failure, precisely the one thing that could invalidate her gifts, and then wondered why she had ended up in the trash.
This story plays out the idea that tying your self-worth to things you have not done (narcissism, essentially) sets up the world as a potential betrayer, and that such a world will someday make you a spiteful fool.
Better, then, to truly understand your accomplishments. The world will go on being arbitrary and full of misfortune, but when it strikes you, at least your first reaction will not be to scorn everyone around you and then wonder why things have gotten worse for you.
I Am Alive is very similar to the children's story of The Little Red Hen, who plants wheat and gathers other ingredients to make bread, asking other animals for help and receiving none. When her hard work culminates in a loaf of bread and the other animals ask for a share, she tells them they get as much bread as they contributed work, which is to say, none.
In terms of the social events depicted, I Am Alive is something of a sequel to The Little Red Hen (TLRH). Roughly speaking, the TLRH's events map up to and end where the boy enters college. The animals and the pencil have spent this time sponging off the success of a more industrious individual. I Am Live then continues as TLRH might have, were it longer. When the boy switches to a pen, the pencil goes on expecting her (and I contradict the translation of "his" because her attitude is depicted by a spurned woman) acclaim to continue, which overshadows any realization of the reality that circumstances have changed around her; that college submissions must be in pen, and that this truth is independent of the boy's or her wants.
When the boy intends to go on using her in the less award-winning, but still useful, act of studying, the pencil makes herself useless to spite the boy. Maybe the boy had kept her due to sentiment, or because he didn't want to buy more pencils. But by refusing to even act as a pencil, she throws away yet another reason for her to stay around. Her spite proves utterly counterproductive.
In the trash, we see a more pessimistic side of the wider situation. The soda can was purpose-built to be drained and discarded, perhaps roughly analogous to seasonal workers or people who lost the genetic lottery. His presence in the story seems to be an acknowledgement that not everyone who ends up at rock bottom could have averted their problems with hard work and good attitude (whereas the hen story limits itself to faulting the animals for their laziness); some folks just aren't made to last in society, or terrible circumstances squash good people flat. The can even accepts his lot, seeing the trash as his place now that he holds no soda (which is an awful thing to consider, but brutally honest on his part and not an entirely unheard-of attitude.) The pencil scorns the trash's inferiority, believing she does not belong there.
In truth, perhaps she doesn't. But she certainly put herself there. Unlike the can, she was made to be ever-giving. But she had tied her belief in her worth to another individual's accomplishments, even though her involvement was merely as a necessary but replaceable component. So much so that when circumstances betrayed her, she made the boy a target for her spite. And in doing so, she reached down into her greatest quality, her ever-givingness, and destroyed it. She would never have been shaved into uselessness as a wooden pencil would be. She would never have run out of eraser or lead as long as the boy replenished her. But she willfully took on mechanical failure, precisely the one thing that could invalidate her gifts, and then wondered why she had ended up in the trash.
This story plays out the idea that tying your self-worth to things you have not done (narcissism, essentially) sets up the world as a potential betrayer, and that such a world will someday make you a spiteful fool.
Better, then, to truly understand your accomplishments. The world will go on being arbitrary and full of misfortune, but when it strikes you, at least your first reaction will not be to scorn everyone around you and then wonder why things have gotten worse for you.
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@Metonym:
Ah, a beautifully-written analysis, takes me back to English-class days. However, also like my English-class days, I think you're possibly even expanding slightly beyond what was actually imparted by the work: Comparing it to The Little Red Hen would imply that the pencil were capable of doing work of greater importance, and making it a parable of laziness, but that message isn't really borne out here: Aside from it's last act of defiance, the pencil performs it's function to the greatest extent of it's ability, albeit proudly, but is nonetheless ultimately left behind. Then, confused as to why it is no longer needed, in it's futile effort to regain importance, is it discarded.
That combined with the the last panel—with, "do you remember what you are?" emblazoned under a prominent garbage-truck, which is I think (it's been a while) the page that prompted my original comment—seems to make this a much more darkly cynical parable. Putting that as the punch-line, seems to indicate that the moral has to do with everyone being just disposable trash from the beginning!
As such the theme doesn't seem to be about just "pride" (and was never, I maintain, about laziness), but rather to be about the "danger" of thinking that you are in any way important to modern society beyond your use as a convenient tool; how we try so hard to convince ourselves into thinking we are important when we're eminently replaceable; how our value can be lost suddenly; how if you try to fight it you'll just be tossed aside callously. Or something along those lines, anyway.
As for what I was saying originally—that the message was delivered in a slightly too-obtuse fashion, or so I felt—if I'm right about what the message was, then the fact that you took a more generic parable from it would actually reinforce my position, I think.
Ah, a beautifully-written analysis, takes me back to English-class days. However, also like my English-class days, I think you're possibly even expanding slightly beyond what was actually imparted by the work: Comparing it to The Little Red Hen would imply that the pencil were capable of doing work of greater importance, and making it a parable of laziness, but that message isn't really borne out here: Aside from it's last act of defiance, the pencil performs it's function to the greatest extent of it's ability, albeit proudly, but is nonetheless ultimately left behind. Then, confused as to why it is no longer needed, in it's futile effort to regain importance, is it discarded.
That combined with the the last panel—with, "do you remember what you are?" emblazoned under a prominent garbage-truck, which is I think (it's been a while) the page that prompted my original comment—seems to make this a much more darkly cynical parable. Putting that as the punch-line, seems to indicate that the moral has to do with everyone being just disposable trash from the beginning!
As such the theme doesn't seem to be about just "pride" (and was never, I maintain, about laziness), but rather to be about the "danger" of thinking that you are in any way important to modern society beyond your use as a convenient tool; how we try so hard to convince ourselves into thinking we are important when we're eminently replaceable; how our value can be lost suddenly; how if you try to fight it you'll just be tossed aside callously. Or something along those lines, anyway.
As for what I was saying originally—that the message was delivered in a slightly too-obtuse fashion, or so I felt—if I'm right about what the message was, then the fact that you took a more generic parable from it would actually reinforce my position, I think.
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@Pokari
I don't think I say that the pencil ought to be capable of doing greater things than she did in primary school. And if I say that the pencil's problem is laziness, then I qualify that with implications that it is laziness tainted by complacency and misplaced, as you say, pride. I do try to express that this is a more nuanced parable than TLHR because it touches first on outsize entitlement, and then the motivations and consequences. Descriptions of spite and forsaken gifts are far more central to my previous post than references to laziness, I'd say. Thanks for helping me refine my point.
Now it's true: one point that I didn't make in my comparison was that, unlike the animals, the pencil did contribute in part to what she claims credit for. And, implying laziness in her via TLHR or "sponging" may seem a weak claim, given that passivity is built into her metaphor as a pencil. But I find "sponging" an appropriate term for the pencil, because her sense of entitlement scaled up with her contribution. The animals did nothing and asked for a share. The pencil did something any other pencil could do and acted as though she were essential. "Without me, he couldn't ever have done this!" So yes, the pencil does her greatest, but she vastly over-esteems her contribution to far greater deeds.
I think we'd better characterize the pencil more truly: A pencil performs its function to the greatest extent of its ability, and overestimates that ability's importance even as circumstances begin to contradict that estimation. Confused that she is not needed the way she /wants/ to be needed, she refuses to work in the way that she /is/ needed. This is an attempt to show her owner what work is like without her, even though her problem stems from her owner learning what work is like without her. Having reinforced her owner's inclination that it may be time to let her go, she is discarded.
Between our two assessments, the world takes just as arbitrary a hand in beginning the pencil's' misfortune. But the pencil's actions were not futile or arbitrarily judged. They simply did the opposite of she wanted because long-established pride blinded her to what would achieve her desire to be useful. She was wrong about what her usefulness was at all.
Put in this light, I think that "Do you remember what you are?" is a brilliant question, because there are two ways of reading it. One clearly aligns with the path the pencil takes. The other takes some work to not be caught up in the pencil's flow, as it were. The first is something like "You can be part of great things. Maybe you're even great. The fact that society and the world can reject you despite your gifts is proof that they were only using you all along." Which is certainly compelling if one considers the pencil's pride forgivable, or undeserving of its poor consequences. But if one is critical of that pride and the pencil's self-defeating decision to spite the boy, the reading is more like, "You are small. For reasons you can't control, society and the world will push you toward the trash. But if you are honest with yourself and expected that all along, maybe you won't react with jumping straight in." Both readings are valid, but I take the second one for myself because I've had enough of the first in my life.
And I'm able to get that read because the author seems to think the same, despite the trash truck ending. The pencil's unrelenting self-aggrandizement is not something people proudly admit to as their MO unless they're narcissists. Hardly anybody at all makes obvious their mortal fear of inadequacy as shamelessly as the pencil, who calls others trash before ever acknowledging what she has made of herself. Thus, I don't believe that the author puts the pencil forth as anything resembling heroic, unjustly brought low by the world. If that were the point, there are much, much more tragic or ways of writing this story, placing less clear blame on the protagonist and more on unjustness in the world.
I Am Alive makes the reader work pretty hard for a positive read. But so does the huge world and all its pathological pencils. In that respect, it's just true to life.
I don't think I say that the pencil ought to be capable of doing greater things than she did in primary school. And if I say that the pencil's problem is laziness, then I qualify that with implications that it is laziness tainted by complacency and misplaced, as you say, pride. I do try to express that this is a more nuanced parable than TLHR because it touches first on outsize entitlement, and then the motivations and consequences. Descriptions of spite and forsaken gifts are far more central to my previous post than references to laziness, I'd say. Thanks for helping me refine my point.
Now it's true: one point that I didn't make in my comparison was that, unlike the animals, the pencil did contribute in part to what she claims credit for. And, implying laziness in her via TLHR or "sponging" may seem a weak claim, given that passivity is built into her metaphor as a pencil. But I find "sponging" an appropriate term for the pencil, because her sense of entitlement scaled up with her contribution. The animals did nothing and asked for a share. The pencil did something any other pencil could do and acted as though she were essential. "Without me, he couldn't ever have done this!" So yes, the pencil does her greatest, but she vastly over-esteems her contribution to far greater deeds.
I think we'd better characterize the pencil more truly: A pencil performs its function to the greatest extent of its ability, and overestimates that ability's importance even as circumstances begin to contradict that estimation. Confused that she is not needed the way she /wants/ to be needed, she refuses to work in the way that she /is/ needed. This is an attempt to show her owner what work is like without her, even though her problem stems from her owner learning what work is like without her. Having reinforced her owner's inclination that it may be time to let her go, she is discarded.
Between our two assessments, the world takes just as arbitrary a hand in beginning the pencil's' misfortune. But the pencil's actions were not futile or arbitrarily judged. They simply did the opposite of she wanted because long-established pride blinded her to what would achieve her desire to be useful. She was wrong about what her usefulness was at all.
Put in this light, I think that "Do you remember what you are?" is a brilliant question, because there are two ways of reading it. One clearly aligns with the path the pencil takes. The other takes some work to not be caught up in the pencil's flow, as it were. The first is something like "You can be part of great things. Maybe you're even great. The fact that society and the world can reject you despite your gifts is proof that they were only using you all along." Which is certainly compelling if one considers the pencil's pride forgivable, or undeserving of its poor consequences. But if one is critical of that pride and the pencil's self-defeating decision to spite the boy, the reading is more like, "You are small. For reasons you can't control, society and the world will push you toward the trash. But if you are honest with yourself and expected that all along, maybe you won't react with jumping straight in." Both readings are valid, but I take the second one for myself because I've had enough of the first in my life.
And I'm able to get that read because the author seems to think the same, despite the trash truck ending. The pencil's unrelenting self-aggrandizement is not something people proudly admit to as their MO unless they're narcissists. Hardly anybody at all makes obvious their mortal fear of inadequacy as shamelessly as the pencil, who calls others trash before ever acknowledging what she has made of herself. Thus, I don't believe that the author puts the pencil forth as anything resembling heroic, unjustly brought low by the world. If that were the point, there are much, much more tragic or ways of writing this story, placing less clear blame on the protagonist and more on unjustness in the world.
I Am Alive makes the reader work pretty hard for a positive read. But so does the huge world and all its pathological pencils. In that respect, it's just true to life.
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Honestly, fairly needless analysis aside, this just feels like it would be prime material to set off an existential crisis.
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