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Love Story: This book was not up to my standards  

Erich Segal´s novel is a little bit like normal life, but who needs normal life?

How can you compare a book to a movie? A book is written to open your mind and to let you think and imagine. And a movie is just an interpretation, a personal look on a story. So let’s see how far my picture of the book gets together with the movie.

While reading the book I didn’t realize that the introduction was very short and not concrete enough. The reader was thrown into Oliver’s and Jenny’s life without background stories and long explanation. But when I saw the movie it was very easy to recognize that there was no introduction. The producer shortened the conversations and gave, for example, the hockey game special emphasis. Naturally a hockey game, which is full of action, is much more interesting for a movie than conversations could ever be. But the producer showed the characters´ emotions and their thoughts in another very special way – he took a melody! So when the spectator hears the melody, he knows exactly what’s going on in Oliver’s mind. The melody makes you sad, more sad than thousands of words could ever do. And at the end you can forget everything about the movie, but not the melody.

The producer did not make use of the power of picture, what would be usual for a movie, he took the power of music. With this trick he continued the idea of the book. The writer used a very special kind of writing, he expressed the emotions with insinuations and the producer used a very special kind of presentation, he expressed emotions with music.

Ryan O´Neal, Ali MacGraw in Love Story directed by Arthur Hiller (1970)

The other thing is that the movie made everything more drastic. For example, the most important sentence in the book: "Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry" , sounds like this in the movie: "Love means never having to say you’re sorry." There is a big difference when you say "never" or "not ever". Usually the spectator does not need as much power as in the book to understand the intonation and finally the plot. Actually nearly everything goes like this. Jenny’s and Oliver’s fathers express two totally different father figures. The contrast between them is much more elaborated in the movie. On the one hand there is the loving father, who has no possibilities to support his daughter, but loves her more than everything in the world, on the other hand the cold, distanced father, who can give everything material to his son but who is unable to give love. I did not see this difference in the book as clearly as I saw it in the movie. In the same way it goes with Jenny – her characteristics were excessive in the movie. She is more feminist and more cheeky. Only Oliver stays the same in the movie.

Finally I want to say that I liked the movie much more than the book. The book is, as far as I see, nothing special - it is written in a very easy way, without background. After reading the book, I have learned nothing and have not found any new cognition. Maybe nowadays it is modern to write a book like a newspaper or like a teenager magazine, but I cannot believe that this is the right way for the authors. "Love story" is a little bit like normal life, but who needs normal life?

As I said in the beginning: A book has to challenge my mind and has to force me to imagine something. But this book was not up to my standards. "Love Story" was only one among thousands. With movies it is different – from a movie I do not expect much, only entertainment. And this movie entertained me. Maybe it was a normal movie, but something was different – again the music! I guess, the music gave the movie a very personal touch, it made the movie alive.

Imagine
by John Lennon (1940 - 1980)

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religions, too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope some day you will join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possession

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of men

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope some day you’ll join us

And the world will be as one.

John Lennon: Imagine

A dreamer´s view of the world (?)

In the first verse John Lennon sings about forgetting about heaven and hell. He wants us to imagine to be free. I guess a symbol for the freedom is the sky. John speaks about taking away the pressure, which is created by the wish to be good or the fear to be bad, and he wants us to forget the limits between good and bad. He says it is all the same thing, the sky. John makes the countries and the borders responsible for the war and murder in the world. He says we would not have a reason to kill if borders and religions disappeared. He wants us again to imagine this situation.

John is speaking about a lot of people, who are also dreaming about peace and he asks the audience to dream about peace and to act for peace, too. He wants to share his imaginations and to reconcile the whole world.

John Lennon, known as one of the Beatles, became a peace activist after marring Yoko Ono. He fought for peace with a lot of protest songs. "Imagine" was also written to prevent war and to convince people to "make love not war".

John wrote the song from a childlike perspective. He never demanded peace or never forces anybody to do something for peace in his song. In his song he is only talking about his imaginations. His song asks you to think about peace but there are silent reproaches against mankind. John never makes people responsible for war and crime. The reproaches are only present because of our conscience.

John makes religion, possession and countries responsible for war. But he never accuses the people. Believing in the good nature the human being, he tells his listeners that he is "not the only one" who believes in peace and freedom. And John has the big hope that one day everybody will be like he is.

I think that John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono were very important persons for the seventies. They formed a movement, which had the power to overthrow the conservative sixties society, which also fought the horrible Vietnam War. Lennon gave the seventies generation hope. He said that only because flower power had not worked, it was by no means too late.

John was one of the first who had the dream that we need peace and he was willing to give everything to reach it.

"Imagine" became Lennon´s quintessential song, a moving song for love and peace. He embedded his dream in a melody which actually transmits something peaceful, dreamy, even if one does not understand the English text.

Lennon painted a picture of a world without country borders, hell, possession, hunger, greed and especially without religions. A deeply faithful human being will protest and reject those thoughts about religion. An atheist will agree. A human being seeking for the nature of mankind might become even more thoughtful than he already is.

Imagine stayed in the top 10 in England for about 18 weeks. In the USA the album was also on top and stayed in the charts for about 30 weeks.

Lennon called his song "Working Class Hero with chocolate-coating ", because Lennon was a "working class hero" and his message was peace for everybody.

"Imagine" is an anti-religious, anti-national, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song, but just with sugar…and that is why it has been accepted by the people. Once Lennon said: "You have to put a little bit of honey on your political message."

Was Lennon´s political message communism? He has never been a communist, but to the audience and also for him this song sounded like a communist song.

John Lennon was a very interesting person - he was not afraid of doing mistakes and he never gave up his determination.

I guess John was too extreme. For me peace without war is impossible. They are two things which depend on each other. Indeed, peace all over the world must be our aim, but I doubt we will ever reach it. But let's hope that maybe one day John Lennon´s imagination will become reality…

Are we really responsible for other people ?

Once a year we give money to the poor and hope for salvation

America – An example to the world?

Finally I come to the conclusion, that no decision is possible. Is America´s destiny a tragedy or is America the promised land? There is no answer to all those questions and I doubt there will ever be one.

How good is modern education?

Why is the world full of human supercomputers?

Socrates

What is modern education?
The concept called modern education is neither subjective nor objective. It is possibly about examinations. Teaching is the process of presenting information and testing if the information was learnt well. Is knowledge just useful information? If such is the case, then the aim of modern education is to make students remember something that they do not know already. If modern education is only about remembering and the students already remember the information that is being transmitted, then it is a useless exercise.
Unfortunately remembering is only a part of the process called improving one´s own thinking. The most important aspects are analysis and the observation of the environment, like Socrates said.

Chinese Proverb

What is practical learning in higher education?
Most people go to university to learn, but what is learning and what might you expect to learn whilst at university? Once students went to university to 'read' a subject (English, German, etc.). This implied personal study, reading what others have written. Their main aim was to gather knowledge. The volume of learning is too large now for this process to be enough. Students are asked to study particular issues and contribute to seminars. The aim is to develop students´ ability to access and interpret a basis of knowledge. But employers are interested in much more. They are interested in what your are capable of doing at work and this mostly means what you can do in cooperation with other people. They are interested in your personal skills. So what we are learning in school is not as much important as we might think. We just have to be nice people, treat other people very well and, of course, have some good skills.

Albert Einstein

Does education make Rita happier ?

Happiness depends only on your own, no matter which class you belong to

Educating Rita by Willy Russell is the story of Rita, a hairdresser with a working-class background, who decides to go to university part time to discover her true self and to ‘change from the inside’. At the Open University she discovers that her tutor is an alcoholic, a failed poet named Frank who is only teaching to subsidize his drinking problem. However, she insists that he teaches her all that there is to know about English literature, against his initial protestations. During the lessons Rita and Frank become friends. Rita tells Frank many details of her personal life, for example that she changed her name from Susan to Rita, because of a famous pulp-fiction writer whose name was Rita.

When Rita first entered Franks room, she is a breath of fresh air in Frank's disillusioned and stagnating world. She is naive, direct, something new and nice, she is like a child, who learns something, but who is too young to understand what it is learning. But Rita is also familiar with pubs, beers, movies and popular fiction. This mix – on the one hand a sweet and humorous child on the other hand a clear-headed woman – makes her so interesting and unique. Rita realizes that there is something she does not understand, that in a way she is not free. She wants to change, wants a better way of living, but does not really know how to achieve it. She rejects her working class origin and changes her name. Rita lives in a world, which consist of beer, football, stories about the past, vandalism and violence, ITV, the Unions, the Daily Mirror and the Sun, everyone is pissed or on the valium, woman have to get married and to get babies.

Rita feels that her present life is not her world and that Frank's world may not accept her. Nevertheless, she realizes that Frank does not really fit into that other world either. He is different. But he understands her world, too, for example he can swear. Of course, they are different all right, but just that gives them the chance to learn from each other.

But during her education she is losing the connection to her working-class world. She gets a divorce from Denny, her husband, she does not understands her mother anymore and she rejects pretending that everything is fine. On the other hand she gets closer to the educated class, she cannot buy any cheap wine and wear some meaningless clothing anymore. Rita is now ‘half-caste’, she feels like a ‘court jester’ for the educated people, but she cannot go back. So she decides to finish her education. And after completing the education Rita knows the standards, the customs, topics of conversation and the language of the educated class, she is now a part of it. The new Rita is now exciting, self-confident and full of news. She has given up smoking, has lost her innocent point of view and has gained a lot of knowledge. Rita is now a proper student.

But did Frank not produce a monster? Is Rita not Frank’s Frankenstein? She does not speak naturally, does not depend on him any more, has changed her name again, prefers young, classy people to Frank and finally: instead of being subjective, innocent and unique she is now standardized in her judgments. At the very end she understands that she admired only empty phrases and an empty world, her friends are not as cool as they seemed to be. She lost her illusions, she is once again lost and displaced in the world. But she is not totally lost, she has a new friend, Frank. Frank loves her as a person, he is not worried about her look, he likes her as an individual. And that is why Rita has to be glad – she found a person who loves her really and honestly. Danny loved her as a woman, but not because she was so clever or exciting, Danny had never seen Rita, he always saw Susan.

From a woman’s point of view she is happier than before. She is independent from any man, she does not have to get a child as soon as possible and she can choose a new good job. Maybe only now she is really an adult and can live on her own. But she had to give up her uniqueness for education, she lost her illusions for knowledge, she changed her uneducated friends against crazy and standardized friends. In the end she understands that the educated class is not as glad as it seems to be. The question is not whether she happier or not, the question is if education makes people happier or not. Frank would say: "There is only another song to sing." And he is right, the melody is maybe different, but the sense is always the same – every society, every class and every person has difficulties in life, but fortune and happiness depends only on your own, no matter which class you belong to.