Hello! I want to start this post by saying that right now I'm feeling a little tired, so I'm sorry if my analysis aren't as good as they should be. The next thing I want to get to is that I found in these chapters that Confucius' whole name is Confucius Lu. I had no idea, and I think it is a really funny name.
Now that I got that out of the way, and before I fall into my normal routine of quote-response-quote-response, I want to say that I noticed a huge change in the way it was written. Since the beginning of these chapters, I have been seeing that the writing style is different, and the word choice changed also. I think now the words are written in a lower level; easier to understand. I specifically noticed a change in chapter 18, where it seems as though it was a story in chronological. That had never happened before in the Analects. It is also very short, which is why I wasn't able to get quotes from it.
I have no idea why the writing would change, or if it's just my imagination, but I personally think it is just part of the translation. It might be that the translator stopped writing it for some time, and when he went back to it, he wrote it differently. I don't know, but in any case the literary techniques used and the whole writing piece in general were completely changed in a matter of chapters.
Anyways, I said that, and now I will go back to analyzing it by picking out the most interesting quotes. First I would like to look at this one: "15.28 When the multitude hates a person, you must examine them and judge for yourself. The same holds true for someone who the multitude loves." I like this quote because I think it can still be adapted and used in this moment, and I think it always will. There will always be people who the multitude loves/hates, and people will base their opinions of them on the rest of the population, who did the same. It becomes a giant snowball. We should learn to decide and take our own decisions without having to base them on what society thinks.
The next quote is very pretty: "15.30 To make a mistake and yet to not change your ways -- this is what is called truly making a mistake." I love this because it is very true. People think that it is okay to do mistakes over and over again because "we are humans, and humans make mistakes," but what they don't realize is that making a mistake ones is fine, but making it twice is the bigger mistake. Not being able to learn from your mistakes and change what you did next time is a very serious problem, and not trying to fix it is a mistake.
My next quote is one of the only quotes in which I disagree with what is says. "17.3 Only the very wise and the very stupid do not change." I agree that maybe the very stupid do not change, but I absolutely don't agree that the wise don't change. Learning is change, and wise people learn. I think they are changing all the time, which is in fact the reason why they are able to be wise. And again as always, I wonder if it was a translating error or if the Chinese writer meant for it to be that way.
Because chapters 15, 17, and 18 where so short, I find that I only have one more quote to discuss, and I'll be leaving. It is this: "17.10 Have you mastered the Odes from the "South of Zhou" and the "South of Shao?" A man who has not mastered the "South of Zhou" and the "South of Shao" is like someone standing with his face to a wall, is he not?" By the description of the south things, it seems as though they were very important things. I don't actually understand how something that important is mentioned, but it is not previously explained. They should at least give us a hint at what it is, and not make us guess what this oh-so-very-important thing is.
As with practically every book we have read, I have many things to criticize about the Analects, but as far as we have gone, I think I personally like to discuss different religions and cultures.
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