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.