Life Between the Lines

My memory is hazy, but I think the first poem I ever encountered was in a Shel Silverstein book an elementary school teacher had introduced to me during reading time. The collection, topped with a silver book jacket (if my memory serves me right), was relatively breezy, and I remember skimming through them within a few days. I loved the relatively ease of reading them, the interesting drawings that accompanied them, the laughs I shared with classmates as I shared the ridiculous ones, and the pattern poems; in short, I loved all of them. Elementary school poetry was lighthearted and fun, filled with puns and limericks that mattered little in the grand scheme of things. It was a while until I encountered poetry again. In middle school, I found Ellen Hopkins's Crank , a collection of poems recounting addictions to meth, a sharp turn from the lighthearted Shel Silverstein books I had enjoyed in elementary school. I'm not even sure how I discovered her books in the first place, but ...

At their surface,  Siddhartha  and The Matrix  seem like polar opposites; one explores nature and its relationship with spirituality while the other explores the bounds of technology and its dangerous repercussions. Yet, guiding the "one story" that dominates literature, film, art, and more, elements of the hero's journey exist throughout these two works, pushing — or arguably being pushed — by their protagonists and environments. Although some elements differ in their portrayal or context, the basic structure holds: a special but relatively unnoticed hero makes a life-altering decision that sends them on a journey filled with many challenges, and an unexpected environmental factor leads to their ending, but it's not the environment that leads to their success; it merely awakens someone that has always been inside of them. In Siddhartha , our protagonist, aptly named Siddhartha, begins as a talented kid noticed in his town but relatively unnoticed in the broader setti...