Sunday, January 25, 2015
Family Strife into Family Values?
Now that you have finished reading the story of Joseph and his family, have your impressions about this family changed at all? Does the family seem to have changed and evolved due to the events involving Joseph or are they primarily the same? Look back to your last entry about family strife and explain how and why your thinking about the family has or has not changed. You should quote your previous entry in this entry and you should also cite specific examples from the chapters you read most recently to support any observations or insights you have.
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I interpreted the family differently after reading more recent chapters. On my previous blog, I seemed to have emphasize how divided the Joseph’s family is, for Joseph being favored left the other children jealous. In the previous blog entry, I expressed my feelings by stating that Joseph is favored, and “since Israel loved him more than all of his other children, his siblings despised him.” This does not resemble a strong relationship with their family. But, after reading more chapters based off Joseph’s family, I see Joseph’s family bonding and sharing special moments together. For example, when Joseph’s dad heard and finally believed that Joseph was alive, he said “I will go and see him before I die.” (45, line 28) This shows that Joseph’s dad cares enough about Joseph that he wants to spend time with him. Also, when Joseph started crying in Chapter 45, he leaned on his brother Benjamin and then Benjamin leaned and began crying on his brother as well. Then “…he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them…” (45, line 15) For families to cry and support each other when they are sad, is a sign of empathy, compassion, and love towards each other. These moments prove that Joseph’s family is closer than I originally thought, and their relationship is likely to become even stronger.
ReplyDeleteI think that in my previous blog post I talked a lot about how the way Joseph was treated was very unfair, but I think God did punish him in the later chapters by basically cutting him out of his own family. I think that Joseph did flaunt his favouritism a little too much for his own good, and so now throughout these chapters he is longer sheltered by his father, and is on his own, and he realised the importance of family and not being so arrogant. When Joseph did not kill his brothers and gave them food to help them get through the famine, it showed that he matured and no longer uses his favouritism to his advantage like he did at the beginning. I think that the recent events that kind of opened Josephs eyes to the real world really changed the way he viewed his family, and he is now the brother he should be. I think this is interesting as you kind of see more feelings between characters now, such as sadness and happiness, there are not as two dimensional as they were before.
ReplyDeleteIn my last blog, I mentioned how God had good reason to favor Joseph over his brothers but in some ways it was more problematic than other cases. But of course God makes no mistakes and Joseph eventually runs into his brothers when they need help. The brothers seem less evil less in these chapters and I sympathize with them. Joseph is supposed to have excellent character and stuff like that, so he is very forgiving toward his brothers. I am slightly confused about the deal he made with the brothers about keeping one of them in Egypt until they bring the youngest one. I get the feeling that it was a clever move but what came of it?
DeleteBasically, the only thing that has changed was that the brothers weren't completely terrible people and Joseph showed forgiveness.
I think that in the recent chapters of Genisis we have seen a more positive side to Joseph and his family. I previously had very negative opinions toward the favored child because they showed a pattern of having the worst character, but Joseph's most recent stories paint him in a positive light. For example he feeds his brothers during the famine since he has food which shows that the favored child isn't always a bad person. I think that the stories we have seen in the bible have made us think of favoritism negatively when favoring someone is something humans naturally do, but now we are seeing that it isn't always bad. On another note I enjoyed these past few chapters because some dimension of the characters was added and we saw more detailed interactions between them which was interesting because it became more relatable.
ReplyDeleteBased off of what we read in the beginning about the story of Joseph and his family, I thought that the family was pretty dysfunctional. Joseph's brothers were extremely jealous of how he was favored over them by their father, and Joseph was only adding fuel to the flames by informing his brethren about dreams where he would rule over them. Whether or not Joseph was oblivious to his siblings jealousy wouldn't really make a difference, because the "bragging" about his reams is what ultimately got Joseph thrown into a pit, and then sold in Egypt. So, after reading about these events, I didn't really think there was much hope for this family. However, once I read the next few chapters about the adventures of Joseph in the land of Egypt, I began to think otherwise. I think that it was interesting how Joseph didn't reveal himself to his brethren off the bat, testing them of their integrity, sort of like how Penelope didn't immediately reveal herself to Odysseus. Eventually though, Joseph revealed himself, bringing about a festival of tears between all of the brothers. It seems as though Joseph's brothers were genuinely sorry for their crimes against him, and they were very happy to have him back in their lives. So, that being said, maybe their is hope for the family after all.
ReplyDeleteAfter finishing reading about Joseph and his family, it can be concluded that the entire family does not have it all set in stone. The entire family is pretty out of control, and you never really know when a fight will break out at any given moment in time. In my previous blog I talked about how Joseph learned how to use deceit to work his way up to the top of his family. How being the youngest brother can benefit situations like the one he was in. After reading these chapters, I agree that Joseph had greatly matured and was depicted in a new light. The fact that he helped his brothers through the great famine shows that he no longer manipulates the favoritism he receives to his advantage. I agree with Jeremy, I found it interesting when Joseph did not reveal himself to the Brethren, once again showing how greatly he has matured, and that there are many other things to be proud of in his life besides favoritism.
ReplyDeleteAt first, like many other people in this class, I thought Joseph and his family were very flat, and didn’t seem to care about each other as much as I feel they should. Mainly the favoritism is a problem in this family, because when one child is liked more than another, the favored child will get all the attention and goods. While the other children are left to fend for themselves for the most part. In the last few chapters Joseph has realized the importance of family. He does this by feeding his brothers during the great famine. This is really important because it show that Joseph cares about his family. As for before, Joseph showed no emotion toward his siblings, besides him taking a slight advantage of him being favored. Having a character evolve, or change, is a new theme in Genesis. All other characters we have met have been flat, and haven’t learned or changed. Joseph is a character to recognize in this religious novel because he is so far the only non-flat character besides God.
ReplyDeleteIn our previous stories all families have experienced some sort of maliciousness and envy of other famil members. Constantly families are being torn in Genesis because of envy and favoritism. The story seems to have no distinction from all of the other jealousy, hatred, and envy stories. Joseph son of Jacob is the favorite out of 11 brothers. Again brothers become envious of the favored brother. Instead of killing him, however, they sell him as a slave to Ishmaelites. To me this story is much worse than the other families due to his long term suffering from envy.
ReplyDeleteI think Josephs family has evolved since the previous event of his eleven brothers selling him into slavery. Unlike other siblings that we've encountered in Genesis, Joseph does not really use his power and authority to painfully or violently oppress the brothers who tried to harm him first. This is one of the first signs of forgiveness and kindness that we've seen between brothers. Also, the other brothers do kind deeds and actually act as a family that cares about each other such as retuning the extra money and gold they found in their bags and caring for Simeon's and Benjamin's well being. Joseph is also expressed as a round character as he is seen crying in Chapter 42 which is a nice change.
ReplyDeleteAlthough all of the characters in Genesis are still pretty flat, it was nice to see a little bit of reaction, and know what Joseph was thinking at some points rather than just his actions. For once we saw characters express emotion, "the spirit of Jacob their father revived" (line 27, chapter 45), which is very helpful when trying to understand a book. In addition, Joseph, who was known to manipulate and take advantage of his brothers, showed some compassion. He could've remained a stranger to them, but rather than decieving them, he revealed himself "Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live?" (line 3, chapter 45). These last chapters have definitely shown some character development, and given us a better perspective.
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