Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Whose the Brave One Now?

I recently saw the movie The Brave One. This movie is about a woman and her fiancé who get attacked in central park by some random thugs. The woman, played by Jodie Foster, survived with critical injuries (physical and mental) while her fiancé was killed. When she recovered her entire look on life changed. Her character almost became a type of “bad guy.” She started coming across incidences where someone was getting attacked and she would take the matter into her own hands by seeking revenge on the attacker. She ended up murdering multiple people before finding the ones that actually hurt her directly.
Jodie Foster’s character was not satisfied until she got complete revenge on the people that attacked her. This is a common theme throughout many of life’s decisions. After 9/11 America felt that we needed to get revenge on the terrorists and Iraq. Now that we are in the situation of war, we do not exactly know where it is leading us. There is a chance that we will not get the revenge we desire because this war has gotten to be so ridiculous. If we lose the war it will seem like it was a bad decision to enter Iraq. However, if we win we will be satisfied, regardless of how many innocent men and women died along the way. This is exactly why revenge is not always the right answer. It could bring the situation into a worse predicament than when it started. In Jodie Foster’s case revenge brought her relief, but as we can see relating to the war in Iraq, this does not always happen.

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