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.