The Red Balloon

The red balloon must be extremely symbolic, and it’s clearly very abstract. You can interpret it in many different ways. The red balloon is in the center of the picture, making it the most important. It is also accompanied by a very light background, which makes it different to the rest of the figures, and it’s the only figure in the picture that does not use straight lines, along with a tree to the left border of the picture, or at least what seems to be a tree. If it weren’t for the balloon and the “tree”, the painting would almost have no sense, which is interesting, because the only two different figures are the only two that actually have some significance, or at least an obvious significance. Thanks to the balloon and the tree, what I see in the painting is a city, built over a hill and with a red balloon hovering over it. But the red balloon and the tree are not everything, also at first impression they appear to be. At the right, a series of squares of different sizes and colors are stacked over each other but in a very interesting way, because only their corners touch each other, making them seem as if they were excluding each other. So what we see is a series of unrelated objects making a single picture, and a picture that actually makes sense, even though all the elements in it have absolutely no relation with the rest, which may signify that everything we do, or everything that is, has an affect over the rest of the world, and the rest of the universe.

Judas?

Although this is not the famous "The last supper" by Leonardo daVinci, it's some other piece by another artist, although I was unable to found the artist's name. All the peoplein the picture look bored, although it may just be sadness, because Jesus is informing them that he will soon die. However, Jesus is standing taller than them all, and his face doesn't show sadness at all. His height symbolizes higher power than all of them, however there is a man who draws more attention than Jesus himself, since he is right at the middle of the table, and is not looking anywhere but at the floor. Meanwhile jesus is pointing at this strange man with his hand, and although at first sight everyone's sight is apparently directed at Jesus, if you stare closer enough, the sights are actually pointed at this strange man. Jesus is the only one looking towards the viewer, making him seem as if he is the only one who knows that he is being watched. He knows what is happening, and this symbolizes that at that time he was also the only one who knew what was really happening and what would happen. All the other men appear to be staring with suspicion at the strange man, who can be Judas perhaps, and therefore, they were all suspecting of him, but only Jesus knows that he was the one that would betray him.

A better future?

The end of the book is very symbolic. Throughout the whole novel, Willhelm sort of feels suffocated and trapped. The author even makes you feel sort of trapped yourself, and i felt a lot of pity for Willhelm many times. Willhelm sort of drowns after learning that he has no support from his wife, has no relationship with his kids or with his father, and has absolutely no money. He also misses his lost love with Olive. As he begins torealize that he is sort of hopeless and that he really needs to start again, he even has difficulty breathing, and starts to drown. Then, the river of people carries him along and takes him to an unknown person's funeral, and he starts weeping even though he never knew the person. The riverof people represents all his burdens, and he is drowning in those burdens, and those burdens lead him to realize that he feels completely alone, as if he were dead, and it's then when he begins to weep even though he doesn't know the guy who's being wept. This is sort of the explosion of all the burdens he has throughout the book. The book begins by introducing all the probloems Willhelm has and it ends by them getting even worse, but with Willhelm realizing that he needs a new beginning. You just hope that Willhelm's future will get better, because it apparently can't get any worse. It would be fun if the author showed this future.

Vanished

It is sad how people fall for traps that guarantee easy money. I am sure that we'd probably all fall if we actually were convinced that it would work. Willhelm fell because he liked Tamkin, although he didn't quite trust him. It is also sad how there are people who are willing to steal somebody else's money so that they can do whatever they want to. It reminds me of DMG, which appeared to work for a while, and then it was closed by the government because of other pyramid-like systems that had scammed people out of their money in other parts of the country, like Putumayo. People would hand in all their money (Including their sold homes and cars) because they thought that they would win easy money, but then the next day, they would go to claim their money doubled and they would find messages saying things like "Las únicas piramides que no se van son las de Egipto", or "Feliz Navidad", since this all happened around christmas. Then no one would be there, and the savings of years, especially the savings of poor people would've vanished. It is incredible that someone is mean enough to dothis, but mostly, it's the perople's fault because they thought that easy money would just come like that, and president Uribe said later "Easy money dissapears as easily as it came". That's why, although I feel pity for Willhelm, I think it was in part his own fault.

Willhelm's mysterious past

Past events leave a permanent mark on all of us. Absoulutely everything. Even things we don't remember. This book takes place in very little time, but if there's something that we can realize quickly is that Willhelm had a happy past life, and he lost it because of some stupid mistake. He's notproud of his life, but he does talk about some woman named Margaret all the time and about his kids. It would be interesting if the story of Willhelm's past was told, however it's also interesting to imagine what happened. They got divorced, which is obvious, but why? And why did Willhelm go to NYC after the divorce instead of at least staying in the same city as his children's? He does miss them a lot, so I don't understand why he left them. Willhelm's father tells him earlier that he gives too much money to the kids, but we don't know that, since we don't know how the kids live, We don't even know how many kids he has and what ages they have, and we don't know if they're boys or girls. The story is about Willhelm, but his past should be mentioned as well, and it isn't, as if the author was trying to tell us that Willhelm is trying to forget about his past.

Willhelm in 2009 Wall Street

Who knows if Willhelm would still be as excited as he appears if he was living right now, in the middle of the financial crisis in the United States, and in the whole world. This market can be a money-making machine, but it can also drain your money away. Since my father works in the Citigroup, we've felt the crisis at home. My father was left in charge of an amount of work that is usually done by five people, and his salary was cut off. My uncle invested in Citigroup stocks when they where costing about 30 dollars. Now they're in 4 dollars, and they where in 97 cents for about a week. However, as my father says, big crisis hold the greatest opportunities. Imagine if you bought 100 stocks at 97 cents and then resold them for 54 dollars (The highest citigroup stock value in history.) You would win about 5300 dollars! But then imagine if you bought 1000 stocks for 97 cents, which is 970 dollars, and then the government decided to nationalize the bank. Then you’d lose all your money. So yes, this book was written just after world war two, when the economy was not very good but it was fine. I wonder what would’ve happened if it was written now. Would Willhelm still be dreaming about the stock market?

1970 Colombian

The relationship between Willhelm and his father is a very sad one. However, I think it is not the worst father-son relationship I have heard of. Unfortunately, here in Colombia, especially some years ago, men were forced to study the same career as that of his father, even if he didn't like it.
"What? I'm not going to have a chef under my roof! You must stay in the family business and be a lawyer, like me and your grandfather and your great-grandfather."This was a very common line,according to my father and his friends. Sometimes they actually wanted to stay in the family business, but most of them didn't, and where forced to. This was how it worked some years ago here in Colombia, and I think Willhelm's father is very much like that. Maybe the same movement that took place here in 70's took place in the US back in the 40's, but maybe it never happened and Willhelm's father just behaves like a 1970 Colombian father. My father's father died before my father went to college, so he didn't live that with his father, however when he told my uncle, who is 14 years older than him, that he wanted to be an architect, he found the following reply:
"Which architect do you know in the family?"
So my father had to quit architecture and now is an economist, which is a profession he likes a lot, but maybe he would've liked architecture more. It's sad that parents expected their children to live the exact same way they did. Nowadays you're allowed to choose your own life without your parents expecting you to live like they did. It's great that we've left behind that selfish culture.

Impressions

In chapter two of Seize the Day, we can see how important it is to take care on what we do or in how we speak. In this chapter not much really happens, except a talk between Tommy and his father. At first, since Tommy talks a lot about his thoughts, I thought he was a little exaggerated. But, after some thinking, I realized that most of us (If not all), have similar thoughts as we speak. Any thing the other one does or doesn't do can cause false impressions on us, and we can maybe even not notice. Our movements (Body Language), can annoy other people, and since most people don't tell you "Hey, that annoys me.", you have to be very careful on what you do.
"Why the devil can't he stand still when we're talking? He's either hoisting his pants up and down by the pockets or jittering with his feet".(p24) I can tell that the poor guy he's talking to is not really intending to do that in order to annoy him, and yet Willhelm doesn't tell him anything. I always tell my friends when they're doing something weird by accident, and they tell me. I think this helps us get better at talking. I don't like the fact that Willhelm criticizes but doesn't really tell the person. Also, it'snot just body language, but misinterpretations. Some days ago, a friend of my father's asked me if I knew her son,who is in 12th grade and is famous for being extremely smart. I said "Yeah, I know he's really smart, and he's not even in my grade." She then asked "Oh really? Your grade is full of smart people?", which was not what I intended to say. I intended to say that he's famous for being smart even in other grades. It was a misinterpretation, and even though she wasn't really mad becuase of my comment I felt ashamed. Willhelm makes a lot of misinterpretations, or he just over-analyzes everything people tell him. He tries to look for insinuations, or hidden meanings in phrases that don't have them. Not everyone is as extreme as Willhelm, but we have all made misinterpretations at least once in our lifes. This teaches us to be careful about our word choice, because if we aren't, we might be taken in the wrong way and this could lead to consequences we don't want to deal with.

Willhelm and Buendia

Willhelm is at an age where it's hard to change who you are. Yet he still thinks that he can change his life, and is dreaming about becoming rich with the stock market. He still thinks that there's a way to change his life completely, and it is sad to see the situation that he is in. His father seems to be very dissapointed at him, at how his life is so empty. I don't like his father, but I don't like Willhelm either. Their lifes are very sad, not just Willhelms, but his father's also. Their way of living sort of reminds me of 100 years of solitude, which I am reading right now. Both the characters in Seize the Day and in 100 years of solitude have attitudes towards life that seem to be as if they didn't like their lifes, which doesn't surprise me. Both are trying to become people they are not, and trying to change the world and their own way of living in unimaginable ways. Not only that, but they actually try to do it, and they could, I've always believed that you can do anything, but they sort of know deep down that some things are almost impossible to accomplish, and when they bump against a wall they get really discouraged and wait a long time before triying again. I think Willhelm and his father are very similar to many of the Buendia family members.