Summer Assignments:
Community is intertextuality. Just this week it "spoke" to Doctor Who and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I think intertextuality is my favorite thing about literature. I get excited when I recognize a reference or something I've seen before.
I was raised Catholic, so I was never a bible-reader but a listen-to-what-the-priest-says-er. Now that I've read some of the bible, why it's such a universal big deal, I still don't understand. It's this beacon of morality and there's a lot of... moral ambiguity.
Mythology was super interesting. Charlie's Angels even uses the Trojan Horse.
I wonder when writers use something like the Trojan Horse or a Cassandra whether they know its origin or know it from some other previous work in which it's been used; or conversely what happens when a reader recognizes it, but not from its origin but from a different work. The intent of its use can be wholly misunderstood.
D.I.D.L.S.: I continue to have trouble discerning between these categories of technique. Most of the time I still have to ask but aren't they all language? What exactly constitutes a detail and not imagery or language? I also am having issues with picturing describing regionalism/level of formality on a one-word-at-a-time basis; that feels more like a syntax thing.
When studying meaning of text, it's difficult for me not to feel like all of this is much too sentimental and can't we just get on with it oh my God. I don't feel comfortable analyzing something a writer may have done "unconsciously" yet, either.
I should read more David Sedaris. Interesting choice for practicing close reading.
It's sad that I won't be able to write about movies on the AP Lit exam (HEY aren't they literature?); they're the only titles I can even come up with for open prompts and my analyses of them would probably be...better. Analyzing camera movements is so much easier than remembering enough of a novel/poem to analyze it on the spot.
September 18, 2011—Open Prompt
OF COURSE I answer the first prompt wrong
2004, Form B. The most important themes in literature are sometimes developed in scenes in which a death or deaths take place. Choose a novel or play and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a specific death scene helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
2004, Form B. The most important themes in literature are sometimes developed in scenes in which a death or deaths take place. Choose a novel or play and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a specific death scene helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
Some may see the saying "be careful what you wish for" as a cliche, but it's wisdom is still present even in day-to-day life. What if one wished for eternal youth, and what if the outcome is neither beautiful nor decent but flagrant and fatal? Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray revolves around a wish made by the titular character to never grow old. Instead, for every action he takes, for every immoral decision he makes, the physical reprecussions are aborbed by a painting, his portrait. Dorian's life of vanity and indulgence, however, lead to violent deaths, including Dorian's own. Through these deaths, Wilde explores the damaging consequences of a wholly humanist life.
Through the first and perhaps most tragic death, Wilde examines the destruction of an innocent life by Dorian's superficiality. A young girl named Sybil kills herself because Dorian rejects his previous affection for her after she embarrasses him in front of his friends. Sybil was only thinking of Dorian at the time, and his rejection is too great for her to bear. She is the first victim, and her death leads Dorian to succumb to a complete lack of conscience.
Dorian later stabs the portrait's painter and his own friend, Basil. With Basil's murder, Wilde shows how incapable Dorian is of taking responsibility, how that life can hurt those who care, as well as how sins, whether the physical mark of them is there or not, can come to control the sinner. Dorian kept the evermore hideous painting hidden away, but in showing it to Basil, feels a white hot anger and targets the blame for the painting's ugliness on Basil, not his own lifestyle. In a moment of impulse, something Dorian is not a stranger to, he impales Basil with a knife. Dorian doesn't understand responsibility because he's never seen it on his own face in a mirror. His immorality accumulates to the point where he destroys one of the few who still care for him. Wilde shows how one can alienate their loved ones in leading an indulgent life. Furthermore, Wilde suggests that the painting actually gave Dorian that violent impulse. His hatred for Basil boils after he glances at the portrait. It is sudden and uncontrollable, showing how Dorian could never have escaped his actions, they follow him and influence him still.
Wilde's only novel ends when Dorian Gray stabs his own portrait in the heart. Under the supernatural circumstances, he stabs himself in the heart, and dies with the wretched appearance of his portrait. Dorian's death gives Wilde's final argument: an unchecked, superficial life leads to maddening self-loathing.
September 11, 2011—Close Reading
"Are jobs Obsolete?"
In this commentary, Douglas Rushkoff proposes an idea that he himself knows won't be taken lightly, but he proposes it in such a way that a reader feels he's coming from a rational place of mind. He proposes that the unemployment crisis of today isn't today's real issue—restructuring society around something other than employment is.
Opening with reference to the endangerment of the USPS, Rushkoff explains how digital technology has hurt the unemployment rate for a long time. He shares the fact that "there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day...even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high," going on to report that banks are demolishing foreclosed homes. He uses this information to make his point: We have everything, but no longer an appropriate means of distributing it. Moreover, his presentation of this information also tells us how wasteful we are to protect the agricultural sector of employment. Rushkoff continues with a brief history of how the modern notion of employment came to be, focusing on how before the "advent of the corporation," people worked for their value and, now they work for their job. With only this information, one feels as though their job today is of no value, it's just filler, and all society keeps trying to do is sustain the filler.
Rushkoff makes some precise word choices for his argument; much of his diction relates humans to pieces of outdated technology, but not in a way that implies he feels that way about humanity. In the first sentence he mentions the "replacement of working humans" by digital technology. The word "replacement" pertaining to people produces an image of human hands being switched out just like a faulty piece of machinery. Rushkoff later refers to taxi-drivers as being "render[ed]...obsolete," like analog cameras by digital point-and-shoots. But he gives the impression that this isn't how he sees humans, it's how the current employment structure does, enforcing his idea that the employment structure is broken.
Finally, Rushkoff's perhaps most critically utilized technique is the rhetorical question. He opens his idea with "since when is unemployment really a problem?" and when addressing how society sees the use of technology as something taking work away from people in the goal of cheap efficiency, he asks, "Isn't [that] what all this technology was for in the first place?" In using questions rather than statements, Rushkoff is presenting his theory in a gentler, more inviting-for-consideration way. He's letting the reader ask themself about the problem; the reader is not simply being told a blatantly new concept. With rhetorical question is also how Rushkoff connects to the humanity of the issue, asking, "Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with 'career' be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?" This allows a reader to first explore within his or herself the good that could result from a alternatively-organized society before making his own propositions.
In this commentary, Douglas Rushkoff proposes an idea that he himself knows won't be taken lightly, but he proposes it in such a way that a reader feels he's coming from a rational place of mind. He proposes that the unemployment crisis of today isn't today's real issue—restructuring society around something other than employment is.
Opening with reference to the endangerment of the USPS, Rushkoff explains how digital technology has hurt the unemployment rate for a long time. He shares the fact that "there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day...even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high," going on to report that banks are demolishing foreclosed homes. He uses this information to make his point: We have everything, but no longer an appropriate means of distributing it. Moreover, his presentation of this information also tells us how wasteful we are to protect the agricultural sector of employment. Rushkoff continues with a brief history of how the modern notion of employment came to be, focusing on how before the "advent of the corporation," people worked for their value and, now they work for their job. With only this information, one feels as though their job today is of no value, it's just filler, and all society keeps trying to do is sustain the filler.
Rushkoff makes some precise word choices for his argument; much of his diction relates humans to pieces of outdated technology, but not in a way that implies he feels that way about humanity. In the first sentence he mentions the "replacement of working humans" by digital technology. The word "replacement" pertaining to people produces an image of human hands being switched out just like a faulty piece of machinery. Rushkoff later refers to taxi-drivers as being "render[ed]...obsolete," like analog cameras by digital point-and-shoots. But he gives the impression that this isn't how he sees humans, it's how the current employment structure does, enforcing his idea that the employment structure is broken.
Finally, Rushkoff's perhaps most critically utilized technique is the rhetorical question. He opens his idea with "since when is unemployment really a problem?" and when addressing how society sees the use of technology as something taking work away from people in the goal of cheap efficiency, he asks, "Isn't [that] what all this technology was for in the first place?" In using questions rather than statements, Rushkoff is presenting his theory in a gentler, more inviting-for-consideration way. He's letting the reader ask themself about the problem; the reader is not simply being told a blatantly new concept. With rhetorical question is also how Rushkoff connects to the humanity of the issue, asking, "Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with 'career' be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?" This allows a reader to first explore within his or herself the good that could result from a alternatively-organized society before making his own propositions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)