Blog 7: More thoughts on Requiem

I had the chance to hear Dr. Maya Angelou speak last night at the Mershon Center, and it was so inspirational that I just knew I had to find some way to connect it to class so that I could talk about it. Today in class I thought of a way to do that! Dr. Angelou made a very interesting point last night, while talking about the fact that we are all human, and thus capable of everything, in both a good and bad way. The quoted a man named Terence, a playwright of the Roman Republic who wrote "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", or "I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." She then paralleled this to thinking about people who do horrible things, and the fact that they did them, means that since we are each human, we also have the capability within ourselves to commit these acts as well. When applying this to Requiem, we may be able to understand Mosen's character a little more. Like we have been saying, he is only human, as we all are, and he is capable of doing some wicked things (like his traitor acts that we see in Requiem), but that means we all are capable of these things. Yet, applying this to Paco, who is the hero of the village and brave enough to stand up and do something about the injustices occurring, is also human, and thus we all have something in ourselves that is capable of being that brave as well. In this way, as Dr. Angelou also pointed out, it is liberating to know we are all human.