Blog Portfolio 2

Hi!

Coverage:

These are all the blogs that were assigned this quarter

Glass Half Full with Regret

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/10/glass-half-full-with-regret.html

Barbie and Things

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/barbie-and-things.html

The Beauty Myth

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/beauty-myth.html

Feminist Movement: The Most Ironic Thing Ever

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/feminist-movement-most-ironic-thing.html

Handmaid’s Tale Commentary

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/handmaids-tale-commentary.html

Why 3+ Syllable Words Do Not Make You Smart

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-3-syllable-words-do-not-make-you.html

The Road Blog

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/road-blog.html

Depth:

The Road Blog

In this blog, I talked about the book in comparison to the movie and some examples of foreshadowing I found.

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/road-blog.html

Interaction:

Barbie and Things

In this blog, I used an expert from a classmate Nina’s blog. (3nina.wordpress.com) The idea of uniformity being somewhat beneficial is discussed.

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/barbie-and-things.html

Discussion:

Feminist Movement: The Most Ironic Thing Ever

In this post, I took a very polemic position. I argued that women should not blame men for their inability to advance in society. Fellow classmates started a discussion.

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/feminist-movement-most-ironic-thing.html

Xenoblogging:

Unwomen

I was the first person to comment on this blog and I also came replied to her reply. Her post was about the effect the media has on the roles of women. She also talked about the role of women in The Handmaid’s Tale.

http://3nina.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/94/#comments

Wildcard:

Why Its Always Sunny is the Most Brilliant…

For my wildcard post, I decided to talk about the television show Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I like it.

http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-its-always-sunny-is-most-brilliant.html

Why It’s Always Sunny is the Most Brilliant Thing Ever (Wildcard)

An immutable fact is that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the greatest, most funny thing ever to be produced. The show follows five people, three of which are related, and the bar they run: Paddy’s Irish Pub. There is not a single character in the show that is the least bit gracious; rather, every one of the protagonists has their own faults. Mac is a want to-be badass who thinks that he is the sole master of karate and that everything in his daily life would be enhanced with scissor kicks. Dennis is an extremely haughty pretty boy who takes every chance to show off his mad pecs. Dee is a gross girl that no one really cares about too much. Frank is the father of Dee an Dennis, played by Danny Devito, who is just so extremely gross that it is beautiful. He used to be extremely rich but lost it all for some reason, probably a stupid one. Lastly, and without a doubt most important, Charlie is an illiterate maniac who is just the best. The fact that I find it hard to describe these characters shows how deep they actually are.
But now let’s do some analysis! I watched a really interesting episode this summer and it only seems fitting to talk about it in a blog in which Ms. Morgan is my teacher. In episode 10 on season 4, “Sweet Dee has a Heart Attack” there is an allusion to “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” So cool! By a series of events only able to be done by the writes of Sunny, Frank ends up in a mental hospital, just like the role he played in the movie based on the film. There we meet all the characters, Nurse Ratched, The Big Broom Guy… and more. It really took me by surprise and I was proud of myself that I got the allusion; it made me feel smart. The episode ends with Frank getting Broomden to pick up a water fountain and throw it out of the window. Some of the characters are messed up but the fact that Sunny made a reference to a piece of literature that had an effect on society made me proud of it. Good on you It’s Always Sunny!
Here are some more fun facts, but I guess they would only make sense if you watch the show. In the show, Charlie is obsessed with a girl “The Waitress.” The feeling is not mutual though and the woman hates Charlie. However, in real life, the two are married. Along with that, Mac and Dee are married in real life too. It is not as cool as the Charlie one though. I just recently watched the third episode of the sixth season and it was pretty funny. Apparently there is going to be a movie coming out soon, but the Sunny guys will only be writing it, not so much acting in it. Along with that, they are going to be starting a new show which takes place in space, sadly though, once again, they will only be producing it.
There is no doubt that Sunny is a fabulous show, but there is one thing I wonder… Is Charlie Day and the other actors who play (and produce) the show smart? I wonder if they are like the characters they portray in Sunny. Are they actually the worse people in the world? I hope not. The only thing wrong about It’s Always Sunny is that all the characters are Phillies fans; I hate the Phillies. But It’s Always Sunny makes up for all of Philadelphia’s sins… it even makes up for them not being man enough to be capitol of America.
So in conclusion, watch Its Always Sunny but do not download it illegally.

The Road Blog

The Road by Cormac McCarthy at first was very mundane. It was difficult to read and I found it very dry, but it isn’t until you look back to you realize the beauty of it. The simplicity of it, the absolute lack of superfluous details makes it brilliant. In the book it is clearly evident that the boy and the father really love one another and that they would do anything for one another, yet in the movie, the story is extremely different.
After reading the book, I was eager to watch the movie; I was let down. When reading the book, I felt that there was more of a dependency on the father and the son. I did not get that from the movie, the two weren’t “each other’s world entirely.” Also, I always imagined the boy to be much younger than he was portrayed in the movie. One of the biggest things that makes this book successful is the relationship the father and son share, I feel like it was not achieved in the movie. Another thing that was not captured in the movie was the desperateness of the human race. The scene in the book in which a group of people eat a new born baby is significant to the picture I draw of the human race in this post apocalyptic world. I feel like that scene should have been in the movie in order to achieve that picture, but I do realize that it would be too explicit for movie goers. It is a pretty gross thing to imagine.
Another good thing about the book was the foreshadowing it had, which more often than not, come during the boy’s dreams. Firstly, in one of the boy’s dreams he talks about a wind up penguin that is walking but it is not wound up. At first, this flew right over my head but then I realized what it was. The penguin represents all the people on the road because they are moving without any fuel and without any purpose. It foreshadows what is to come for everyone in the world. Next, in another dream, the boy dreams that he is screaming in his sleep but his father does not come and get him. The father apologizes for not coming to help him when the boy explains the dream, thinking that the dream he is explaining actually happened. The boy responds by saying, no it was the dream in which I screamed in. this foreshadows the father’s death.
Overall, The Road was a very good book, but it was a bit dry in places and it seems to me that the only reason some of the interesting parts were so interesting was because they are interesting juxtaposed to the rest of the banal text. Out of all the books we have read this quarter, I would say this is my third favorite book after “We” and “1984.”

Why 3+ Syllable Words Do Not Make You Smart

In James Wood’s How Fiction Works, the main idea that is expressed is adoration for the third person free indirect style of writing, or something like that. This style of writing focuses on more of speaking like the character would speak. The author gives examples from books of a single word such as stupid that has a tremendous effect on the development of the character. The author of the book is thinking like his character and his character would think like that. That single word lets us introspect on the character. Why does she think it is stupid? I found many examples of this in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The dialogue the father and son share is extremely annoying but also, after reading this essay, very insightful. The two speak in one or two word sentences. Words such as “Okay Papa” etc. must have shown up at least one hundred times. But those two words have more depth than any elaborate sentence could hope to achieve. Their dialogue shows the simplicity they live in but at the same time, it shows the love they have for one another. It shows the sons respect for the father and vice versa. I know there are too many levels for me to even begging digging for. The author could have said “Okay Father, thank you for getting me food, but I would rather not go on the Road again, well, I guess it is plausible that we should because you know what is correct.” (Over exaggeration). But whose words would they be? Wood also talks about the words authors use and who they belong to. The simple words “Okay Papa” 100% belong to the little boy. I did not imagine the obviously erudite McCarthy thinking deep into his memory for words that were more eloquent than those. The boy wouldn’t be looking back into his memory for words to substitute the simple words. Firstly, he probably does not have enough energy to think that far and secondly, probably has an extremely limited vocabulary. The words the authors use are chosen carefully, there is reason for every single one. When I used to think of characterization I thought of the first few pages of the book which describe the protagonists but things have changed. Every single word a character speaks lends to his characterization; he says the words he says for a reason.

Handmaid’s Tale Commentary

In this excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred is talking to the Commander about her past, more specifically, her views on love. At this point in the novel, Offred has been secretly seeing the Commander in his office and has been learning about the reasons for the creation of Gilead among other things. By using diction that relates to falling, a change in tone from content to disgust, and irony, Atwood foreshadows the immutable dominance man was to have over women.


Firstly, whenever Atwood says the word love, it is not far from the world love.

• “Still loving, still falling”
• “Falling in love, I said. Falling into it, we all did then, one way or another.”


Atwood uses this peculiar diction to show how women were already subject to man’s abuse. Offred can now admit that love was her downfall but at the time, she was oblivious to it. The same could go for most women. This helps with the essence of foreshadowing because it shows that women had been, for a long time, being hindered by man. Nowadays it is because they are only permitted to work in certain areas and it is much more drastic, but if you water this down, you get what women consider love. Women like to fall in love but it is something that is abusive to them. It is something that one has to get out of, but once they fall in too deep, it would be hard to remember if they ever had any role of power in society. Atwood uses the words love and following in succession to show that love was one of the beginning signs of the subjection of women.


Next, Atwood changes the tone from the first stanza to the second stanza to show how women were oblivious to the detriments of their love when the first fell into it.

• Before: “It was the central thing; it was the way you understood yourself; if it never happened to you, not ever, you would be like a mutant, a creature from outer space.”
• After: “… through the window onto his sleeping face, making the shadows in the sockets of his eyes darker and more cavernous than in daytime, and you’d think, Who knows what they do, on their own or with other men? Who knows what they say or where they are likely to go? ... What if he doesn’t love me?

The piece from the first stanzas shows how women thought that love was an integral part of their life. They needed it to find themselves and they were happy once they did. The tone of this is much happier than the following. The next piece from the second stanza shows how women began to feel insecure and see the flaws that a man has. Although these faults have been there the whole time, the women are credulous when the first fall in love. It is only when they sleep with them do they begin to think what if, but by then it is too late. The tone in the second stanza is much more solemn and it relates to the society Offred lives in now. There is nothing the handmaids can do now to better the society they live in now and the same would have gone for a women who sees the true side of a man.


Lastly, Atwood uses irony to show how oblivious women were.

• “We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion; so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely.

The use of oxymorons helps demonstrate how women were subject to abuse yet they still lived with it. The same goes on now but in current day Gilead the women have a lot less chance to revolt than they did back in the day. This piece is ironic because the women liked to fall in love but at the same time were somewhat aware of the negative effects it had on then. Nonetheless, they still went for it.

Feminist Movement: The Most Ironic Thing Ever

“Women are unhappy precisely because they are free. Women are enslaved by their own liberation.” I could not have said it better myself. Throughout our whole unit on the feminist movement, I was never able to clearly express how ironic the movement was. Their own yearning for freedom ended up castrating them; but was this just me being overly analytical? The feminist movement truly is the worst thing that could have happened to the sex. How does this work? How do the freedoms a group of people gain end up hindering them more than helping them? A survey said that “men’s opposition to equality is a major cause of resentment and stress and a major irritant for most women today.”Women are blaming men for the hardships they face. This chapter in the book gives facts about how when a certain goal for women was being advocated, the government tried to deter it. In all honesty, although it may sound extremely sexist, I believe that feminist groups use the idea that men are the bad guy as a scapegoat. They are upset that they have not achieved the same level of power as man, but man has been working to achieve this power since the founding of America. I do not know if this next argument is either relevant or politically correct, but the same goes for all types of races. You do not see very many Latin Americans or Indians in super high positions in America. The white man has been groomed for a position of power since 1776, so how can you expect a new “type” of person to be as well suited for this position of power if they have just been told they can do it not even 100 years ago. Women get mad at men and think that they are taking away their positions but, more often than not, the man would be more suited for it. Women have the right to run for a seat in government so why don’t they do it? Is it because “America is not ready” or “they will be looked at poorly”? That is not true at all. Women have the opportunities to rise up but when they get to afraid to do so, they instantly blame the man in power. What benefit would man have from stopping the feminist movement? No man wakes up and thinks “Oh no, what if I lose my job to the new tier of women who are becoming successful.” If both a boy and a girl grow up in Country A, with equal opportunities and level of schooling, and they are both equally as smart and equally as committed, it is farfetched to say that the boy in Country A is going to succeed in life much more than the girl. Women and men are equal in every sense of the word, its only when the women realize that it takes more than rallying for abortions and writing books about how stupid men are to become successful. The first step is getting your rights, so now go out and use them to your full ability. Don’t just sit back and blame someone else for something that you are afraid to acquire. I hope that does not sound to sexist, but it is my opinion.

The Beauty Myth

Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth touched on the idea that all women based themselves on a certain criterion. Now that women are free and can vote and do more things than they could before, they must be suppressed some way. “If the beauty myth is not based on evolution, sex, gender, aesthetics, or God, on what is it based? It claims to be about intimacy and sex and life, a celebration of women. It is actually composed of emotional distance, politics, finance, and sexual repression. The beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men’s institutions and institutional power.” I believe Wolf is touching on the fact that men began to feel threatened by the amount of power women had been getting. As they grew older, they were establishing themselves in society. Women have been freed from the shackles from their yesteryears but only to be placed on even heavier constraints by the current generations. “We are in the midst of a violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement.” The idea that the beautiful women are good women is used as a deterrent to hinder the whole sex’s progress. This relates to The Handmaid’s Tale very strongly. The reason that there is a coup is so that women become subjective to men. When the revolution first happens, all the women’s cards and means of accessing money is cut off. They need to rely on men to do anything. Along with that, all women’s jobs are ended. The men of Gilead are much happier with this being the situation. When the women work for the men, the men do not need to install this idea about beauty. The women have already been suppressed enough. The use of the perfect beautiful women is destroyed, the actually destruction of every opportunity for a woman to succeed is enough to placate the men. That is not to say that a certain type of beauty myth does not exist in A Handmaid’s Tale. The women are indoctrinated to believe that a perfect handmaid is one that bears children and does not complain about it. There is still a criterion on which they can compare themselves to and, in the end, feel unsatisfactory about. I do not believe that this is present in present day Gilead, but it will be in the future generations. Once the initial hump of distress is passed and the world they life in is considered normal, the beauty myth will turn into the perfect handmaid myth, and the perfect econowive myth etc.

Barbie and Things

In these two passages from Part II: Becoming a Woman in Our Society, one main idea is advocated. The ideal image of a woman, whichever way it is spread, is detrimental to the actual women. The two ways discussed in these chapters are through Barbie dolls and women’s magazines. One woman recounts that “if you didn’t look like Barbie you didn’t fit in.” All women to some extent strive to become the perfect woman, and Barbie really did set the limits way to high. “Barbie is the only toy in the Western world that human beings actively try to mimic…” Women are becoming suppressed by a doll that is supposed to portray their gender. My favorite part of the first chapter is when the woman relates the Barbie dolls to the Third Reich. Because every single girl wants to become a blonde haired blue eyed replica of Barbie, the doll did what Hitler could not succeed in doing. For young girls to believe that becoming Barbie is the only acceptable way to live is an extremely sad circumstance. How is it possible to set your dreams solely on a plastic doll? The next chapter talks about the effect that magazines have on women. “Teen magazines’ glorification of boy-focused, looks-based, prom-obsessed idiocy reinforces every negative stereotype that has ever been used to justify – and ensure – women’s second class status.” These magazines paint an impossible picture for women that they turn into their dream. They teach women how to be perfect, a goal that is impossible for every person. Both these outlets have created a perfect image for what a woman should be. A class mate of mine, Nina said:

I couldn’t if I were a Handmaid because I would have to wear the red uniform. But maybe Uniformity is the only way to eliminate the irrational despair that goes through the minds of all girls who throw up on purpose and starve themselves.

http://3nina.wordpress.com/

I cannot help but agree with this statement. We are reading the dystopian novel A Handmaid’s Tale and in that, all the Handmaids are forced to wear a red uniform that covers their whole body. I think to some extent, the people who started this revolution whole heartedly felt that this new world they put on women would be beneficial to them. Nowadays, women will go to extreme measures to become beautiful only because there is that shining what if. If this perfect woman is either destroyed and uniformity is achieved, women will not yearn for the Barbie girl figure, rather, they will just be content with who they are.

Glass Half Full with Regret

These two passages had a very strong point; the voice of a woman has been repressed by their community and society. There were two examples of this, one from a black women and the other from Laos. They both talk about how they were discouraged from speaking when they were young, and in turn, this way of living became habitual and eventually, the women basically became afraid to speak. The women from the first chapter said that she had not completely let go of the fear of saying the wrong thing, of being punished. Even though she is a published author, she is still afraid to talk. This has probably come from her suppression as a young girl. No matter the strength of a character, when he or she grows up in a world where the ability to speak and say what one believes is suppressed, it is unlikely that that person would ever be able to blossom into a confident man or women. In The Handmaids Tale, Aunt Lydia tells Offred that she is part of a transition phase. Offred in her old world is a very strong woman who is not nearly as introverted and controlled as she is under The Eyes. The next generation of girl though, will be completely different. These girls would have grown up in a world where their being quite is looked at as the right thing. Their role will be so domesticated that to us it will seem far-fetched, but to them, it will seem normal. All of this goes back to what we know. In the story of the North Korean Gulag, Shin does not know that there is anything different than the horrible world he is living in the concentration camp. Because of this, he had no real reason to want something else. The next woman who writes has a similar story. She grew up in a world where women were subjected to the order of man. Her mother did whatever her father said so and she went as far as to tell the author, “Nod your head and say yes even if you don’t agree. It’s much easier.” The girl could be easily manipulated because of the world she grew up in. “(She) was a cup, continuously filled, half with anger, dissatisfaction, and anxiety, and the other half with emptiness.”

Hey Buddy!

Hi!
This is my Blog Portfolio for the first quarter of my IBHL English Course. Enjoy it and feel free to comment.


Is There Any Absolute Truth?
http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/09/is-there-any-absolute-truth.html

I chose this post as my Coverage Post because I cover many of the aspects of double think and other elements from 1984 as well as the evidence of absolute truth project.


First the Forest, We Discussion
http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-forest-we-discusion.html

I chose this as my Depth Post because I made many inferences about the nature of man from these two pieces of literature. I state that for a person to be human, they most have a wanting to learn, have greed, and have the ability to think for themselves. I ended up using this argument to help construct a thesis for an essay I wrote. Along with that, the following site helped me formulate my ideas: http://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-1/fogley/.


Akash’s Comment
http://akashenglish.blogspot.com/2010/09/shine-lived-through-unthinkable.html#comments

This is an example of an Interaction. I commented on a classmate’s blog, Akash, who was writing a post about an article in the New York Times about a North Korean Gulag. I raised the point that the child in the Gulag, because he was born there, knew nothing of the outside world and thought the world he was living in was normal, and how that related to his neutral feeling towards the Gulag before he learned that there was an outside world. I also pushed him to make inferences to the novels We and 1984.


Wesley’s Comment
http://whamiltonthegreat.blogspot.com/2010/09/use-of-truth.html#comments

I helped out Wesley’s argument by ushering him to go more in depth with an argument. This is my example of Xenoblogging. I introduce the idea about the controlling of the past leading to the controlling of the people and provide an example from the past to strengthen it. It would be an Informative Comment because I introduce the idea about the Hitler Youth.


Oh My God Wildcard!
http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/10/oh-my-god-wildcard.html

I chose this post as my Wildcard because I genuinely enjoyed writing about it. I talked about the book A Clockwork Orange and how it relates to free will.


Newspeak: The Light at the End of the Tunnel
http://asimlikesenglish.blogspot.com/2010/09/newspeak-light-at-end-of-tunnel.html

This is my Discussion piece because it began a conversation between Saumya and me. I was arguing for the abolition of ambiguous words while she was against it.

Oh My God Wildcard!

Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange was the one book I read over summer, as well as watched the movie, and it ended up tying in to the books we are reading in now. The book takes place in the future where the world has turned into another sort of dystopia. In this case, the government does not have all the power, in fact, just the opposite. The world in A Clockwork Orange is run by the youth. The elder people are afraid of the younger generation who are extremely rebellious. A In the novel, the main character is a threat to society as his hooliganism reaches a high and he ends up going to jail. To get out of jail sooner he takes part in a experimental technique which will “ turn him good” again, the Ludvoco technique. This is where the dystopian elements start to shine.
This technique, whose goal is to make the main character’s personality a more favorable one, forces Alex to watch the horrible things in the world. He first gets injected with some medicine that makes him weaker and then is forced to watch disgusting videos of horrible violence. Alex correlates his feeling bad to the viewing of the videos that incorporate violence, and in the end, starts to cringe at the thought of it. Even though it is the medicine that makes him feel bad, Alex begins to think that it is the ultra violence that is causing him to feel this way. He ends up turning into an overall good person, but at what cost.
This book touches on the whole idea of free will. Is it really Alex’s choice to turn good? Is he actually good at heart, or is he just scared of being bad? This whole idea got me thinking about why I am the person I am today. Am I studious and nice because society has made me afraid to be stupid? Is the fact that dark colors and sharp scary music behind images make them bad? If we grew up with happy flutes playing in the background while a man was kill an enemy, wouldn't we think that it was a good thing? Doesn't music that invokes hatred and dark colors make a video clip, or picture of a face, seem more disgusting? In 1984, and in the world as it is now, the use of media and certain elements is used by society to make people think of certain things a certain way. I believe in A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess touches on the fact that man is malleable to outside force no matter how much he knows of the past. There is always a way to make his subconscious think what the higher authority wants it to. Sounds like propaganda to me. I do not believe that human beings have any free will in the sense that they believe what they believe because of implications society puts on it. Everything we call bad and call good is solely based on what society says it to be. Now I am depressed.

Dystopian Societies Today

This news article gave me a grim realization that the dystopian worlds I read about in books actually exists in the world today. The concentration camp which Shin Dong Hyok spent most of his life in is very similar to that of Oceania and the One State, in We. Like in the dystopian novels we have read, Shin did not hate the people who were oppressing him, he did not know that bad things were bad, he was not permitted to have feelings, and the aspect of family was obsolete. These characteristics are very similar to the lives that D-503 and Winston face in their respective worlds. In their dystopian societies, the citizens, for the most part, love their rulers, they do not see the worth in feeling and rather prefer mathematical reasoning (especially in We), and the establishment of family does not exist. Shin Dong Hyok suffered a sort of Stockholm syndrome in the sense that he, although he did not necessarily enjoy the surroundings he was born into, he did not think he was being treated unfair. Not until he learns of the outside world, just like in We, does he start to yearn for the outside. Another similarity between the world he lived in and we was that to some extent, he wished he had not known of the outside world. “Shin said he sometimes wished he could return to the time before he learned about the greater world, “without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea.”” This is so shocking. The fact that he was more content in a totalitarian world than the free one he is now makes me wonder if man actually likes to be controlled. If I was freed from such a hell, I imagine that I would rejoice and celebrate and finally live my life, but after reconsideration, especially after reading this, I do not if I would be able to be content with the power I had. It would be like me getting sent to a place which no one in the world knew about and told to do whatever I want. This example can’t even begin to brush on the extremity that Shin faced but it really makes me wonder.
Along with similarities to We this article has some similarities to 1984. In both worlds, the idea of marriage is not believed to be beneficial and couples are allowed to see each other only as “award marriages.” Also, there is a slogan similar to that in 1984. “Everyone obey the regulations.” The similarities between the dystopian worlds we have read about in novels and the one the Shin actually lived are extremely similar. It begs the question, was the concentration camp world Shin was living in, actually hindering him? Not until he learned of the outside world did he try to escape. It seems that either he was too weak both mentally and physically to try and escape, or that he was too scared and found no extreme grievance in the world he had. I am in no way saying that these North Korean concentration camps are at the slightest bit humane or worth any praise, but rather raising the question, what would you do if you woke up tomorrow and realized that the world that you called your own was merely a façade and that the truth laid miles away?

Is There Any Absolute Truth?

After the presentations we did in English today, I realized that not a single piece of evidence was voted to be completely absolute. There was always a counter argument or a loophole that disproved what one was trying to argue. I tried to prove that the edge of a circle is never ending and that it can go on forever, which I believed to be a very strong argument, but I was wrong. Students said that the end point would be the same as the starting point and that a circle was not really infinite. It seems that all the absolute truths revolved around mathematics. In We a constant reference is made to mathematics as D-503 feels safe around something that he knows and that can be proven. A common argument that came up for majority of the students presentations was that of opinion. Each person has a different way of viewing the world, and the only thing in the world that can be viewed in one way, for the most part, is math. This begs the question though, why is there so much absolute truth in Orwell’s 1984?
The people of the Party in 1984 are extremely malleable. They believe anything they are told by the Inner Party and Big Brother because they view them as God. The only reason there is little evidence of absolute truth in today’s world is because people are allowed to have opinion and are free to believe what they want. In 1984 the Thought Police control the thoughts of the Inner Party and, because of fear, the members to don’t believe what they shouldn’t. The Inner Party takes advantage of their member’s credulity. How else can the enemy of a country be completely changed without any negative reaction from its citizens.
In Oceania, religion is disallowed, and instead, to some extent, Big Brother is God. I did not realize this until today, but the things that the Outer Party is digesting are believed to be the word of God. It is like if Jesus Christ himself said that “Blue is now called peanut butter.” After the initial shock, many, if not all people, would follow what he is telling us because He is the greatest character of one’s mind. The sole factor that increases the amount of absolute truth in the world is the presence of a higher being telling us that is what it is. Also, the allowance of opinion and free thought makes it hard for there to be a worldwide consensus on certain issues.

Polititains Love Ambiguity

This activity was much harder than I thought it was. It was one thing to add nonsense vocabulary that I know for whatever reason and using it in a pretty much inappropriate way, but the more difficult part of this experience was actually condensing the speeches in order for them to make since. For example it was extremely difficult to digest what Wallace was talking about. I was about fifty percent sure it was about slaves, but I really don’t know. This connects to what Orwell was saying about the use of politics to manipulate the audience. Politicians utilize vocabulary to present very wish washy message so if things go wrong, they cannot get full blame. They use very sophisticated language to both make them seem smarter, make their points seem more acceptable, and to confuse the audience. I experienced this first hand because when I tried to reword the speeches to make them more straightforward, it was difficult. The only hard thing about going against Orwell and using unnecessary vocabulary is find vocabulary that seems smart. It is easier to protect your main thoughts with unnecessary words than it is to present facts that are strong enough that they do not need any buffer. The hardest thing about this activity was siphoning through all the text and fishing out the words that actually meant something.

Newspeak: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

It seems to me that I have learned more about the English language by reading Orwell’s Politics and the English Language than I have in my five or so years of taking an English class. There are many errors in writing that Orwell talks about that I can directly relate to some writing I do, especially first drafts. His main points are: passive voice is bad; pretention diction is used to dress up simple phrases to give them a more scientific feel, foreign words are used to give the author a feel of elegance and culture, and metaphors that are overused become redundant. Besides the English lesson I learned from this essay, there was an interesting point that shined through. In 1984 Newspeak is the official language and, instead of adding words, the people who work on it, strife to cut out unnecessary words. At first, I was surprised by this idea of control of language and thought it fit like a shoe to the dystopian theme of the book (notice the overused metaphor). Instead, I am compelled to believe that the destruction of words have some benefits.
“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy… Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable…” In 1984 the implantation of Newspeak will eventually make this idea obsolete. With such a limitation of words, the underlying message will disappear. Citizens of the Party will have such a slim selection of words to choose from ambiguity and vagueness will disappear. Orwell argues that wordiness is an extreme crutch of the English language; this is something the Party is trying to eradicate. However, I suppose the reason that the Inner Party wants Newspeak is not so that English teachers disgusted with the misuse of language will be happy, but rather so that everything said will have one meaning. With Newspeak, there would be no room for interpretation and therefore no excuses.
“Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” This is not the case in Oceania though. For example, during Hate Week, the enemy of Oceania changes just like that, but instead of the members of the Party getting upset, they chose to destroy any evidence that the former enemy was really ever the enemy. With citizens like this, the message a Party is broadcasting does not have to be vague. The Party could state even the most horrendous act without any justification and the Party would revel. In today’s world though, this malleability of language is more than necessary. Certain words can be used to strike certain emotions and certain words can be used to make certain acts less intense.
In Politics and the English Language Orwell is trying to show his readers the disgracefully state that the English language is in, but also to demonstrate its power of ambiguity. Think of it this way: because of people’s ability to think for themselves, if a party is trying to say something less than desirable, the language needs to be clear, but if the people have no free will, extra words are not necessary to cloud meanings as people will believe whatever is told.

Haughty Lady

Although the author of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Novel is arguing points I agree with for the most part, there are a few instances where she comes off extremely arrogant and haughty. She gets a lot of pleasure out of stating things that, I believe, majority of people know in the back of their head. For example, she takes a few pages to state how when the reader feels a particular kinship with a novel, she feels as if she is communicating with the author. This sort of connection between the reader and writer is and has been evident to me for a very long time. When you like a book, you become so engulfed in it, that it makes sense that you would believe the author is writing this book for you. “This is the essential pleasure of literature, ideas going into and out of words over and over and over, any time the reader opens a book, or the author takes up a pen” (84). The author argues that the writer, the book, and the reader have a sort of circular relationship. The author’s idea turns into a book which then turns back into ideas for the reader.
The second point I agree with is the idea of willing suspension of disbelief. The reader has to have some sort imagination and can’t question everything that he reads. The author uses the novel The Metamorphosis as an example. She talks about how some students in her class were unwilling to believe that the main character could just turn into the bug just like that. I agree with what she says because when you have the question of why did this happen? In the back of your head, it would be hard to enjoy the book to the fullest. For example, in Zamyatin’s We, the One State is far-fetched even though it is in the future but I still believed that something like that could exist and therefore, enjoyed the novel more. That was about all that I could agree with in this chapter.
The author argues that a good novel has to have an author that is common. She says it enables a reader to relax with a novel and it gives relevance to their own life. This isn’t true at all. The whole genre of dystopian novels totally disproves this theory. How do George Orwell and Yevgeny Zamyatin know what it will be like to live in the future? Although true they are basing the future on current issues, the authors do not have any commonness to the situation but it still seems to give an in depth look into what life is. All good novels have theme whether or not the author has experienced firsthand one he or she is talking about. In Zamyatin’s On Language he talks about how it is important to speak and think like the main character does. This is just as effective as if the author experienced the things he is talking about personally. She also states that books by Donald Trump, Albert Einstein etc. would not be interesting. I do not understand how the popularity or amount of fame one has can affect the strength of a novel. There is no direct correlation between commonness of a person to how good their novel is.
Overall, the tone of this chapter made me upset. The author made analogies and connections to things that were not necessary at all. For example, she took about five pages comparing a novel to a game. All of these analogies had the same basic idea: the author and the reader have to establish a connection; something I learned when I was in middle school.

First the Forest, We Discusion

In the class discussion we had revolving around “First the Forests” and “We” Nina asked a very important question. What is human? The two different pieces of literature seem to contradict one another in the definition of man. I believe that “First the Forests” is saying that man is a civilized person who uses technology while “We” says that man is one how has “bestial freedom” and lives like the animal he or she is. I believe the answer to what is a human lies somewhere in the middle. I don’t think that a human can be one that lives in a forest and relies on his animal instincts, but on the other hand, a human cannot be a machine who has no free will or thought. There are certain criteria that make humans the people they are, and neither of the poles that are described in the two pieces of literature are examples of this, rather, humans are a mix and much less concentrated version of the people described in “We” and “First the Forests.”

I believe that a human must have a wanting to know the unknown, must have the ability to think for him/herself, and must be somewhat greedy. In “We” everything is known. Everything one knows can be expressed in terms of X and with mathematical equations. None of the people of the One State have the ability to think for themselves and are controlled by the Benefactor. The Table of Hours tells them what to do at what time. Every aspect of their life is controlled and they do not have the ability to think for themselves. In “We” none of the citizens have any greed. They do not want things for personal gain but rather they do things because they do not know any better. This is like how the denizens of the Incan Empire lived, they had no greed and therefore had nothing to live for but what they were told to do. I believe that the lack of greed directly correlates with a lack of free will. If man does not know that he can achieve more, he will not do anything to achieve more. Rather, he will comply with what others say. In “First the Forest” the author argues that the foundation of humans are that they have religion, matrimony and the act of burying the dead. I believe in these somewhat. I think that the foundation of religion coincides with wanting to know the unknown. When Vico’s Giants heard the sound from the sky, they began to wonder and it instilled a want to know the unknown in them. I do not know if matrimony and burial of the dead distinguish humans from others. Rather, these are just traditions that have become custom to humans. I believe that a human is somewhere in the middle of a humanized machine and a bestial animal. A human must be able to think for himself, have a yearning for the unknown, and must be greedy, in the sense that they want more.

Chapter 7, Questions of Conquest, We

In the three pieces of literature we were assigned to read, I noticed one very surprising similarities. We, Chapter 7, and Questions of Conquest, all suggest that life takes place in a utopia, or dystopia, similar to that of We. To begin with, I am going to talk about what I thought about Questions of Conquest by Mario Vargas Llosa. The author uses an extremely interesting incident to get his point across. When the conquistadores attacked the countries of South America, he questioned why the strong Incas fell so easily. He said that when the Spanish took the emperor, all the people in the civilizations and accepted the fate of death. No one knew what to do once the emperor was captured. He was the Benefactor. They were lost as the lacked the inability to think for themselves. This is like the One State in We because the denizens do not do things for themselves; they are humanized machines who work because that’s all they are told to do. He goes on to state that the Incas had things called Mitimaes which would take villagers who did not comply away until they became passive and showed respect. This is like, to a much lesser extent, what happens in the One State when one goes against the Benefactor. Lastly, the author states that the Incan civilizations only consumed rationally what it produced. It heaped together reserves for future times in case of disaster. This meant that the people of the Incan empire had no greed, but a long with that, no free will. Rebellious outbreaks were always localized and counterchecked by the obedient. The people of the Incan empire were like the people of the One State because they complied one hundred percent with the leader, had no ability to rebel and think for them, and did not know the luxury of things more than what is necessary.
The next article posed another interesting idea. What I got out from it was that we are all, to a less extent, part of the One State with Society being the Benefactor. It states that when we are children we are restricted to what we think and are taught things that may not be best for us. We are taught to smile and be happy. An interesting idea it poses is that to be “emotional” is considered a bad thing in modern society. The author says that from the beginning of education, original thinking is discourages. We are told to believe in facts, and that is what we end up believing in. It seems to me that we are being told what to do. We are taught not to think certain things, taught not to act certain ways. Lastly, and one of the most interesting things stated was as follows. He talks about how all men want more money, a better job, a nicer car. Then he poses a very crucial question: is this what I really want? “Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.” What do I want? I think I want what society wants. I want what the Benefactor wants. Even today, we live in a world we do not control. Do we really control our future? Free will comes into discussion here. In all three of these examples, We being the most extreme, and the daily life of all being the least, no one is doing what they want. But has anyone really done anything they want? I believe that since the beginning of time, evidence of a greater being has been setting the direction for us.