Deceptive Appearances

While studying Macbeth, under my favourite English teacher, our class was told, 'Even if you have never read a Shakespeare play and you find yourself sitting in an exam writing a paper about it, mention deceptive appearances and you'll probably pass, because chances are, that is a major theme in the play.

Reason's for this choice of theme are William Shakespeare's reason's alone.  No one will ever really know why he became so fascinated by this idea that he wrote many, if not all, his plays following this theme.  But one can understand it.

Shakespeare would have gone nuts in college.

This seems to be a play ground for lost souls and hidden identities.

The dining hall is my favourite place to pick out the masks.  This might be because its really the only time I get to observe.  Its the only time I can sit and watch and think.  Being a wallflower by nature, its easy for me to watch people.  I like it too.  That might seem sick in some people's minds, but it really is quite normal.  After all, you can major in staring at people in college and making up opinions about them.

Walking to the Dining hall, the easy way, my way, is a simple cut across the lawn.  This large area of grass where people sometimes commune, and sometimes desert.  Today it was the local communion point.  Girls on lawn chairs, people joining a couple tossing a Frisbee, the picnic table which is always infested with smokers, no matter what time of the day it is, and the small covered area where people pull their cars in to unload, the pizza guy is usually found there.  You can never quite tell whether the dining hall is open or not.  The tinted windows make it difficult to see whether there are actual people inside or not, but as you near, you can figure it out.  If there's a line by the door, chances are, they're open.

Upon entrance, you are hit with a wave of cliques and mis-matched cliches.  The group that can't decide whether they're skate or urban.  The football players.  The surfers.  The skates.  The Japanese.  The Koreans.  They guys that want to talk to the Asian girls because they think they'll get some (they usually do). There's the girlfriends and boyfriends that have been going out for so many years and they just had to go to school together, while the boyfriend just looks bored and is trying to catch a peak at another girl's legs.  And then the wallflowers.  The people on the edge.  Some too engrossed in their food to bother looking around (which is most).  And then there are those stuck in deep thought, sitting in the middle of the floor, where the most people walk by.  I belong there, and we are few and far between. 

All these people wear masks though.  Every now and then one will look at you, and their eyes will tell all.  Those eyes that say 'I'm just like you'.  Then once they see that you acknowledge their glance, its gone again.  I get a lot of glances from guys....but I don't know if its that look, or if they're just bored with their girlfriend.

Anyways, my point is that deceptive appearances is a very real theme to life, and seems to be very prominent at meal times in college.  Everyone wears a mask, we just have to find it.

After all, 'All the world is a stage, and all the men and women mearly players'.

Comments

[Stevo in Taichung]

Why not organise a protest? that's what college students do right?