Jane Eyre Ch. 13-20 Questions

1. Do you think people "...envy...peace of mind...clean conscience...unpolluted memory"? (See page 154 for full context.)

•  Yes, I do think that people envy peace of mind, clean conscience, and unpolluted memory. What you have done or seen cannot be undone. Some people become very focused on things of their past; what they could have done and where they could be. I'm sure everyone regrets at least one thing that they've done in their life. Some people spend so much time thinking about things of the past or worrying about things to come that they never have a peace of mind. They are never satisfied with their situation in life. There are also those people who have done very regrettable things in their past and have not come to terms with them. These people do not have a clean conscience and that bothers them yet they don't want to confess. Others have an unpolluted memory because they may have experienced something or saw something being done. It is very easy to envy these three things but it is important to know that what is in the past cannot be changed but how we act in the future can be. Mistakes that happened in the past were for a reason; to teach us and others how to act in the future.

2. Do you agree with the following: "...error brought remorse, and ...remorse the poison of existence" (156)? Why or why not? Give examples.

• I agree that error brings on remorse but I don't think that remorse is the poison for existence. I think that it's how you choose to act to that remorse that will either make it "the poison of existence" or something to learn from. Everyone has done something remorseful in their lives but it is up to them whether they are going to focus on that or use it as a learning experience. There are times where I've made big mistakes and my initial reaction is to keep thinking about it and how I should have handled the situation. However there is nothing I can do to fix it since it's in the past, the only thing I can do is learn from it so that it won't happen in the future. If I just kept thinking about it and letting it sit there in the back of my mind I wouldn't get anywhere and I wouldn't improve anything. Remorse does come with error but it doesn't always have to be "the poison of existence."