Milton, Soto, and Kolvenbach

 Caitlin Dempsey


In the all three pieces of writing by Milton, Soto, and Kolvenbach the common theme is what a person’s purpose of life is. In all three texts we get very different idea of what this could be. In John Milton’s work, “When I consider how my light is spent”, it how he continues to worship God after being blinded. In “A Red Palm”, by Gary Soto, the purpose of life is to work hard to provide for his family. Finally, Kolvenbachs work focuses on living out Jesuit values and making the world a better place. 

            In “When I consider how my light is spent”, the man is blinded and is trying to figure out his purpose of life now that he cannot see. The man felt that since he was blind, he had no purpose in life anymore. He felt that since he couldn’t connect with God in the ways he had before, God had no use for him. However, he learns that God still values him because he stayed with his faith. In this text, the mans purpose of life was to have a relationship with God. 

In “A Red Palm’ the character is seen be to be working in excruciating conditions to provide for his family. This is seen when he says, “and by the end of the first row, You can buy one splendid fish for wife; And three sons.” This shows that his family is motivating him to work this hard so he can feed his family. After he returns from his long day at work he sits down against the tree in his backyard and falls asleep. When he wakes up and sees the lights on in the house, he equates that to how much work that costs to keep the lights on. At the end of the poem we see that when the dad goes to sleep, he thinks about his job and the permanent mark on his hand. This shows that the man in the poem lives to take care of his family, no matter how much of his life revolves around his labor-intensive work. 

Finally, in the last text we see the connection of the purpose of life to the Jesuit education values. The text describes how the Jesuit values in higher education have had to change over the years. In recent years it is important to teach students to have “well-educated solidarity”. This means that people now must be aware of the society and culture around them and be able to help or do good in their community. The main focus of this text is that students of Jesuit institutions should live their values out day-to-day, and strive to be better themselves and their community. 

In all three texts, the common theme was to find the purpose of life. Each story had a different message and a different purpose of life. I believe this is to show each person has a different path in their life which leads to a different purpose.  

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