In Southern Gothic we have seen our faith share of deaths;
some dramatic, some not quite as much. Like, "The Fall of the House of
Usher," and "A Good Man is Hard To Find" had pretty dramatic
deaths- a great old mansion falling, squashing two people, and serial killers taking
out family members one at a time... but there were less dramatic deaths. Like
that of "Desiree's Baby" and "Idols," those deaths were not
physical, just the death of love and dreams... haha. But we can relate the
death we seen in these stories to death in our everyday life! Not to go too
dark and dramatic with this subject, I am referring to us inflicting death. How
weird does that sound? Well, really we inflict
death quiet often. I mean, how many times have we killed a bug, or better yet,
squashed a bug? Or plucked a flower from its home in the soil? Or ripped a leaf
off of its branch? I mean think about it… we are serial killers! Just because
things are smaller than us, or we admire their beauty so much, it gives us the
right to take its life away?
This is not something that just came to mind, I have always
been full-heartedly against killing animals, of all kinds. I do not necessarily
love bugs; I do not care for flies or enjoy a spider’s company, so when I’m
around one I either leave, or move it elsewhere. Some people argue that there
are too many bugs in the world, and they carry disease, and we should kill them
and this and that, but frankly that sounds like self-justification to me. And personally, I can no longer justify
killing an animal. Not that I have ever directly killed anything larger than a
cockroach, maybe a frog while driving, but I have indirectly killed animals. Every meat-eater has. We pay for our
chicken nuggets at the expense of a baby chick being cut out of her mother,
injected with steroids, and held in captivity until she is just barely large
enough to be thrown down a conveyor belt where she is smashed into bits, later
to be processed into chicken nuggets. This, this is something I can no longer
justify to myself. I refuse to take part in the lifestyle that takes a breath
away from another living thing. So yes, I am vegan. And I am sticking with it
(no animal meat, and no animal products). It is a lot easier than I expected,
and I really do not feel restricted. I love, love, loooove it. Especially
learning about the benefits of a vegan lifestyle- it triumphs over a
meat-eater’s 100% of the time.
The same goes for flowers, leaves, blades of grass, and
Christmas trees. We bring flowers to dying people, or even people we are trying
to swoon, but what good what a bunch of dying flowers do for a dying person, or
a person you are interested in? Why is it not a thing to bring someone a potted
flower, or help them to build a garden at their house, or a spice garden in
their kitchen? A potted plant will surely last a lot longer than ones taken
from their soil. And is it not gothic that we just destroy nature because we
are bored? Why not plant a new seed and watch a new living thing grow into
something beautiful? I mean, I would be a lot more impressed if someone were to
give me a potted plant, rather than a $12 bunch of flowers from Target. And
grass- everyone has plucked blades of grass whilst their sitting in grass, it
happens. But why? There is no purpose. The only person excited about plucking
grass from the ground is my baby Godchild, and even then what are you to do with
it? Ahh, and Christmas trees. I’m no Scrooge, I love a big, beautiful Christmas
tree, but is that not gothic, as well? We farm the trees each year so that they
can be chopped down and decorated in our house. Isn’t that odd? I’ll be honest
and say that my aunt did buy a real tree this year, and I am still having a
difficult time deciding whether or not I’m okay with it. I feel like if we do
something honorable with it afterwards, it will be slightly more justifiable;
for instance, I know that Christmas trees are placed along our coastline to
help slow down the erosion, so if we can donate our tree, then perhaps it wasn’t
such a bad idea after all.
So I guess the cat’s out of the bag. We are such a gothic
society because we don’t view the little things that we do as gothic. Perhaps
if we put more of an emphasis on preserving animals’ lives, and creating plant
life, we would not look at human life as insufficiently as we do. Maybe there
would be less murder among humans, our society would become less gothic, and
lives would be richer in love… Southern Gothic would be at a run for its money!
