Final Thoughts

I definitely learned a lot in this course. I was really nervous when I signed up to take it, because I don't know anything about Czechoslovakia, but I'm glad I took it because I learned so much about it, and about the Communist party. I really enjoyed the books we read too. It was hard for me to get into The Miracle Game because the story moved around so much, but I loved reading Havel. The idea of living in the truth in times such as Communist Czechoslovakia seems like it was so foreign to people and so difficult to do. The fact that Havel needed to write a whole essay about how important it is to stay true to your beliefs even if it means that you could lose everything shows how crazy things must have been for people who lived there during that time. I also really liked reading The Joke. I think the portrayal of women in all three books, but in that book especially, is so awful which is why I chose to do the majority of my writing project on how these novels and Havel's essay relate to our society today. I didn't think that I would be able to relate a Czechoslovakian's novel to American culture in the 2010s, but I believe that the parallels I made are true. I thought all of the movie choices were great too, and reading The Joke and watching The Unbearable Lightness of Being really made me want to read or watch other works of Kundera.

I think that the fact that I was able to connect so many of Havel's and other authors' ideas based on Communist Czechoslovakia to our American society today shows that all cultures really aren't that different. People still want the ability to speak freely and to do what they want to do no matter where they live or what culture they are a part of. Havel talks about the musicians who can't even play their own music because of the Party. Imagine if that's what happened in America. If you couldn't even play a song that you wrote without going through a process to get it approved by a bunch of people in power. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to worry about saying that wrong thing to every person you meet. I think we all are scared of our first impressions when we first meet somebody, but to worry about whether or not the person you are meeting for the first time could report you if you said anything against the people of power, which would then cause you to lose so many things in your life, would be a constant bother. I think the main lesson I learned in this class is that every culture has that constant, that wanting to be the person you want to be without being judged, and wanting the ability to say how you feel. I'm really glad I took this course because it seems like an idea that is so obvious, but it definitely brought a whole new side and perspective to that idea.