The Meta Post: Covey and Me

     My favorite blog post this quarter was my post titled "Frederick Douglass and Covey, One More Time." The Covey fight scene captured our attention as a class for its questionable plot details and exaggerations. The reason this fight was the centerpiece of a post in April, when we read Frederick Douglass in January, is because I came across a parallel in Karl Marlantes' What It's Like to Go to War during my junior theme research. 

Illustration of a bar fight.
Via http://www.tentimesone.com 

An illustration of Douglass
 fighting Covey. Via
http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com

     Unlike my other posts, this post was one that I had been thinking about writing for a couple of weeks before I posted it. I knew that the connection between Covey and the line in Marlantes' book was too good to ignore, but frankly I didn't feel like delving into quote analysis and didn't know how to approach this post. 
     Once I did sit down to do the post, I think I did a very good job of identifying a very American theme: our love of fighting. Just like in our class discussion months earlier, I contrasted the length and purpose of actual fights and those of constructed, fake, for entertainment purpose fights. 
     In comparison to the beginning of the year, I pulled out a quote and actually analyzed it, while also providing other forms of evidence from our class discussion. 
     My only regret with this post is how I ended it. In most of my posts, I try to end with a thoughtful, thought-provoking question that allows the reader to comment whether it be in agreement of disagreement. In this post, I neglected to do that. I ended with more of a wrap-up type finish. That could be one of the reasons no one commented on it. While I didn't completely close off the post for discussion, I could have ended it with a question like, "How would Douglass' story have changed if the length of his fight with Covey had been shorter?" or "What is so American about fighting and fights?" 
     Regardless, this post showed the parallels between two texts, written 155 years apart from each other. Finding that line in Marlantes' book immediately brought me back to our class discussions and gave me a new appreciation for the Covey chapter in Douglass' narrative. Finding this same theme discussed in another book, validated our days of class discussion.