Essay 5

The Bright Side:

An Essay on Hope in the Hopelessness

By Emmanuel Perry

Pine Point school

November 17, 2011

Do you enjoy the wintertime? If you do, then I envy you, since wintertime is a time of dreariness and boredom for me, especially when it is cold and there is no snow on the ground to play or create with. There seems to be nothing I can do in this time of dark emotions. However, there are things I can do to make ‘light’ of the situation.

Winter time is full of many different fun-filled activities like sledding and town-wide snowball fights. However, there is a time between fall and winter I like to call ‘the time of darkness’ because there is no snow to sled in. Instead of snow, we have leafless trees with freezing bitter winds, not to mention the short daylight hours. Despite all this, there is still light in these dark days. One thing that enlightens me during the winter is drawing cartoons, a mixture of storytelling and art, whenever I feel down. The words ‘the ice is slowly melting’ symbolize the ‘ice’ of boredom slowly fading as I make my masterpieces come to life. When I finish my cartoons, I let my friends read them because I believe art is to be shared. I love seeing ‘their smiles return to their faces’ as they laugh and chuckle at my jokes. My cartoons also let me escape from the dreary winter landscape. As I draw them, I can go to warm places and do exciting activities that I cannot do now, such as swimming and traveling to many interesting places. When I draw my humorous cartoons, I can find light in the darkness of early winter.

The line from A Tale of Two Cities “it was a season of light, it was a season of darkness” talks about a time of happiness and a time of sadness. The ‘season of darkness’ can also have a literal meaning because winter is a long, somber season with short daylight hours. The cold weather and frosty winds sometimes wear down on people’s emotions. However, this season of shadows is also a season of light. Christmas, which occurs during this season, gives people a brief feeling of happiness again. It also has many lights during the night, brightening up the gloom. Lyrics from ‘Here Comes the Sun’ have similar thoughts about the cold, gloomy winter and the light within it. ‘It’s been a long and lonely winter’ describes the nights as long, cold, and unwelcoming.  The cold weather can really lower your spirits. ‘Here comes the sun…it’s all right’ means that spring will return along with the warm and wonderful sun. Both the song and the sentence relate to light in the darkness, finding hope in the hopelessness, and waiting for the light to return.

I believe that you cannot have darkness without light. There always has to be a bright side to things. For example, even though I cannot do as many things as I could in the summer, I can still relive those experiences in my cartoons. The dark days of winter are momentarily interrupted by the Christmas season of lights and joyfulness. When times get tough, and you don’t know where to turn in the darkness of boredom, remember that things will get better someday. Remember that the ice will slowly but surely melt, remember the sun will rise again, bringing joy and happiness back to the world.