15 Characteristics of the Chimera
Let’s define the chimera for our chimera essay.
Cause and Effect Analysis of the Chimera (Obsession) Essay
English 1C Summative Assessment 3 (Essay for 200 points):
How do chimeras turn us into sleepwalking zombies who fall prey to solipsism, addiction, and determinism (loss of free will or free agency)?
The Assignment:
Develop a cause and effect thesis for a 1,200-word essay that explores the way Dexter Green falls prey to the chimera, the pursuit of the Ultimate Trophy, in the short story “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. His chimera is The Great White Princess Judy Jones. What are the causes and effects of Dexter’s quest for the Ultimate Trophy?
If you prefer some alternatives to “Winter Dreams” for your chimera essay, you can replace the short story with one of the following:
Hasan Minhaj’s comedy special on Netflix, Homecoming King, in which Minhaj pursues “The Great White Princess.” What were the causes and effects behind Minhaj’s obsession with “The Great White Princess”?
The 1995 Todd Haynes film Safe in which a suburban housewife, Carol White, goes on an obsessive search for Safety and Purity. What are the causes and effects of Carol’s search for Safety and Purity?
The 2018 Netflix film Private Life, starring Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn, in which they play a frustrated couple who fail at their repeated attempts at conceiving a baby. What are the causes and effects of the couple’s obsession with having a baby? In what ways is having a baby a chimera for this couple?
The 1941 film Citizen Kane in which Charles Foster Kane amasses wealth and material objects as a substitute for his obsession with what he lost in his childhood: unconditional love (“Rosebud”). What are the causes and effects of Charles Foster Kane’s obsession?
The 2017 Jordan Peele horror film Get Out in which the white supremacy cult in the movie don’t see African-Americans as human beings but rather as chimerical beings, part superhuman, part subservient, part inferior, and part resource to be exploited and used for their own sinister purposes.
What is a chimera?
Let us look at 15 characteristics:
One. A chimera is a seductive mirage that gets inside our head and feels so real to us that we love it more than life itself.
Two. As we pursue this chimera with greater and greater intensity, we at the same time reject the people around us. In this regard, we are like addicts who prefer our drug to people.
Three. A chimera is never real. It is always a mythical creature that fills our minds, yet it becomes for the person harboring the chimera the Ultimate Reality that casts all other considerations aside.
Four. Sometimes we can be afflicted with a chimera and know it, want to be cured of it, but feel helpless to do anything about it. In this regard, we are dealing with the realm of an incurable obsession.
Five. As our obsession with the chimera progresses, we deteriorate: We retreat into solipsism. For a short definition of solipsism, let us say we are afflicted with solipsism when the delusions of our imaginary self cut us off from reality.
Six. When our brains are hijacked by a chimera, we follow an addiction cycle as acute as any narcotics addict in which we have highs and lows, ascents and crashes, a sort of bipolar life journey.
Seven. Some people pursue the chimera with no self-awareness, what is sometimes called metacognition. An absence of self-awareness or metacognition makes free will or free agency impossible.
Eight. Sometimes a chimera hijacks our brains without warning. It’s an unexpected obsession that hijacks the brains of even productive, sane human beings.
Nine. The chimera is often a substitute for some unfulfilled basic human need like love, companionship, meaning, connection, belonging, maturity, independence, freedom, creativity, etc.
Ten. As the chimera grows over time, the person’s original sense of self fragments, decomposes, and becomes smaller and smaller as a new persona grows, typically an angry persona that resents not getting what it wants.
Eleven. When people do acquire a chimera, they find they are not only disappointed but confused because the actuality of the acquisition pales compared to the obsession-fantasy of their imagination.
Twelve. Often people replace one chimera with another, over and over as their lives are defined by cycles of self-destruction without any self-awareness. The motivation for constantly seeking a chimera is probably an empty life, a life without meaning, or what Viktor Frankl calls in his book Man’s Search for Meaning “the existential vacuum.” The chimera is a feeble attempt to fill that vacuum.
Thirteen. The chimera is an inflamed passion that grows like a weed inside our brains and strangles our powers of reason. The endgame of a chimera is insanity.
Fourteen. Some people are freed from the bondage of their chimera only after long-term excruciating suffering that creates a crisis of such intensity that these people are forced to exorcise the chimera demon from their brain and start their lives from scratch and create a sound foundation that won’t allow for the invasions of subsequent chimeras.
Fifteen. Many people live disconnected from reality and navigate their lives inside a hall of many mirror-like chimeras, which define their existence as a perpetual illusion and somehow they muster a facade of being productive members of society even as their souls rot deep inside.
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