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Feb 23, 2009, 10:01 PM
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Well, in American Literature today we were talking about Emily Dickinson (we are going to read her's and Walt Whitman's poetry the next couple of weeks)
Well, as typical of him, my teacher decides to dish out the details on the lives of these authors. So a lot of what he was talking about with Dickinson involved her isolation from contact with everyone except for writing letters, how she lived with her parents even after they died, etc. (It is because of this that many people believe that she was agoraphobic)
Of course...there are a few girls in my class. I know technically they are very intelligent girls but they always give me the impression of being really ignorant airheads. Their responses were "Oh my god that would be so boring. I could not live like that" and "She needs to get over herself" and after he said about how she lived in the parent's house even after they died they joked about how it's smell since she probably wont even go outside to bury them. 
Well, my friend and I in class were pretty offended by their opinions...I mean, I know she's been dead for over a century but their inability to empathize was astounding. I just told them that in order to understand her you would have to be in that mindset. Of course nobody else but me could empathize it seems  . My friend went the mocking route of saying "Oh yes, how DARE she not get over her fear of people" and was pretty mad at them.
I mean, are people really that thick? It doesn't seem like that hard of a concept to understand. It's like in 9th grade when we were reading Romeo and Juliet I had to explain in great detail about why someone would want to commit suicide and how it's not that they were only thinking of themselves but that they felt everyone else around them deserved better. (which of course lead to a brief rumor that I was suicidal...)
...Or maybe because my friend and I have some mental health problems that it makes it easier to empathize and therefore become outraged at the blatant ignorance of others?
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