Arie Ioselevich, Period 2, 12/4/2022

 

• Literacy & Learning

• Write about your thoughts regarding any of the fiction or nonfiction covered in class.

• Reflect on any new information you have learned in English class by considering how that learning influences your critical perception.

• How is what you’re learning applied to any other classes/the world around you?

One of the topics covered in class was the Egyptian afterlife. Egyptian life revolved around death as a result of immortality. They had a different view on immortality than others and saw death as a temporary obstacle rather than the end of life. As long as they overcome this obstacle, their spiritual body would exist in an afterlife similar to the living world.  Gaining access to the afterlife was not an easy task. Both during and after life, you were expected to pay homage to the gods. This meant that in the extravagant temples built, you had to perform rituals and present offerings. My personal views are significantly different; however, I also spent my whole life worrying about death. Much like they fear not gaining acceptance to the afterlife, I fear dying. I think that it’s not healthy for one’s life to revolve around death and that they did not live life to the fullest. In researching the Egyptian afterlife, I saw the direct effect of storytelling as shown in class. Although a lot of sources had the same message or ending, they all varied slightly in the little details. When evaluating these sources, I had to find the commonalities and erase the bias. This is very similar to evaluating the credibility of news sources and historical documents. It’s evident that one small detail can change the whole story and so you always have to look out for discrepancies. I think that this shows me just how much I have to pay attention to the credibility of sources and how I have to question the truthfulness of any statement given to me. Rather than believing what I hear or read, I have to do my own research to come up with my beliefs. As my beliefs are biased because they are my beliefs, other beliefs are biased because they are someone else's beliefs.