Final Blog 12/1

This story is a very interesting perspective on television. It’s almost a very surreal autobiography of television. It sort of reminds me of Salvador Dali’s art. It has a point, but you need to think hard about some of the finer details. I’m not so sure that I would call this literature. It does have a warning, a sort of moral, like a fable, but it doesn’t have a plot. I personally believe one of the major things that separate literary texts from other texts is the presence of a plot. I think that it is several small stories that are part of a bigger thing, but this thing is not a story with a plot. Another thing I think that makes this piece ineligible is the fact that it creates the pictures for you. I think that a part of what makes literature, literature, is that it gives you the story and enough details that you can make up in your own imagination what this character looks like, what they would act like if they were real.

            On the other hand there are a couple of major things that do help it count as literature. It makes you think about the topic and the characters. Right from the opening, we are encouraged to compare the actors and the characters that they play. The starting of the story we are given two women Maureen Cooper, and the actress who plays her, Carol Livesey. From the start we seem to go more towards the TV character, but we a forced to stop and think about the oddity of this. We like the fake woman more than the real one.

            It is odd. I think that it can be both considered literature and not literature. There are clear signs pointing in both directions.

Assignment 7 11/16

M Butterfly shows us the vast contrast between China and The Western world, but at the same time, it shows us that they are similar as well. In Act 1 scene 10 of the play, Song invites Gallimard to her apartment in France. As they talk, Song acts subservient and nervous around Gallimard. At one point she says, “France is a country living in the modern era….China is a nation whose soul is firmly rooted two thousand years in the past….I’m a Chinese girl…The forwardness of my actions makes my skin burn,”(pp. 29-31). She is explaining how China is still a country with strict rules about how men and women interact that run so deep, it is burnt into the culture. Song also talks about the strong and tough women of the west. If the two, the women of the west and the women of China, were compared, there would definitely be some differences, but there would also be similarities. The woman plays hostess, the woman cares for the home and also cares for the man, and the woman are supposed to be approached by the men. At the end of the play, as Song is standing before the judge, he says that the western world has a rape mentality and that a oriental man can’t really be a man because he’s oriental. In the scene where Song is revealing himself to Gallimard he uses the same line that he claims western men use on oriental women, “Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes,” (p. 87). The stereotypes in this play are both upheld and broken. Gallimard only wants the subservient Chinese girl at his side, using her as he pleases, just as Song claimed to the judge, but in the end the roles have been reversed. Song is now the true man with the rape mentality and Gallimard has been converted into the will-less, helpless woman.

Assignment 6 11/4

The social commentary about a post 9/11 world and the climate leading up to it is a theme that is laced throughout the book Pattern Recognition. Before September eleventh occurred, the main character, Cayce, is staying in a friend’s house when someone breaks in and has appeared to use her computer and phone. After the break in, Cayce has the lock changed. When she returns from her outings from then on, she checks “…that her single dark Cayce Pollard hair is still there, spit-pasted across the gap between the door and frame…” and checks “…that the powder she’d brushed across the underside of the doorknob is still there, undisturbed” (71). From the start of the book, there is a slightly paranoid atmosphere diffused throughout the world Cayce lives in. This appears to be a long hung-over side effect from the cold war, when people were afraid that communists were infiltrating their neighborhoods and government.

            It is impossible to talk about the social climate of a post 9/11 world without talking about spies, espionage, and the stealing of information. Cayce, secures her home with simple devices and tools that are used by James Bond, England’s greatest spy. James Bond fought the soviets and other communist and fascist powers of the worlds. There were many movies made with the same themes as James Bond, a noble man from a democratic nation battling the fascist powers of the world. Even though the cold war ended way before 2000, the security issues and concern about sensitive, top secret information spreading around the globe still exist. The 9/11 incident exasperated this underlying fear. It didn’t create more fear, it made it larger and put that fear back into the forefront of our minds.

            Another aspect of the social climate after 9/11 is the general mistrust of our government entities. While Cayce is in Tokyo, she gets picked up by Boone Chu, her partner working with her to find the maker of the footage, and taken back to the apartment he’s staying at. He asks for her computer and runs a program on it to check for any hacking devices, claiming, “I want to make sure this isn’t sending your every keystroke to a third party” (165). He goes on to explain, “Things have been different in computer security since last September. If the FBI were doing what they admit they can do, to your laptop, I might be able to spot it” (165). There have been many conspiracies about the government tapping our phone lines and watching our every mouse click on the internet. Some even claim that the US government knew about the 9/11 plan, but allowed it to happen so we could invade the Middle East.

Assiignment 5 10/28

In Pattern Recognition, there are many references to the internet and social commentary on the post 9/11 mindset of people. In the book there are two major scenes that bring up the latter subject. One is when Cayce returns to her home to find that Dorotea has broken into her home and left a message for her on her computer and phone. She then proceeds to block up the home until she can get locks replaced on the door. The other is when she walks by a car with three guys standing around it and notices black objects, which she immediately assumes are grenades. In our oversensitive, much prolonged, state of panic, these events cause a violent reaction of fear to run through us. It is very easy, in today’s world, to picture a trunk full of bombs, or a burglar in our home. Gibson is making a subtle statement about our fear of terrorists. The trunk full of bombs is even a scaled down reference to our invading Iraq. We thought they had weapons of mass destruction, but they didn’t. Just as Cayce thought those men had grenades, but they didn’t. Gibson also comments on the internet and social networking. He’s revealing the ridiculousness of having a friend you’ve never met and the outbursts of viral videos.

Assignment 4 10/20

A shift in the point of view in the story “A Rose of Emily” would change many things, like the tone, view of Emily, and the reader’s participation. The tone, if the story was narrated by Tobe, Homer, or Emily, would be more dark and sinister. It could even take on the tone of a horror story. The reader of the story as it is written is conflicted about Emily, sometimes we feel pity for her, and others we feel as if she’s cold and unscrupulous. In the first person plural, the reader is sucked into the story be feeling as if he or she is telling the story along with the other narrators. Without that, the story seems slightly walled off from the reader, that intimacy would be gone. The narrative mode allows the story to become sort of mystery story, where the reader is compelled to go back through and look for evidence to support whatever theories he or she may have. This make the story sort of fun and takes away from the gloom of death and a possible murder. Changing from a first person plural to a first person singular point of view would show us who Emily really is, but it would take away from what made the story interesting. It is much more fun to make our own hypotheses about a mysterious character than have the author tell us who this person is.

Assignment 3 10/7

In Richard Brautigan’s poem “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” is a complex poem with evidence that there is both an anti-technology and pro-technology tone in the poem.

            The anti-technology tone in the poem comes in the perceived meaning behind certain lines and the allusions to certain objects or ideas. In each stanza of the poem he refers to a mixture of computers and nature, “cybernetic meadow”, “cybernetic forest”, and “cybernetic ecology”, Brautigan seems to be referring to a fake computer filled world that humans created for themselves, much like a virtual world. There is also a line where he writes, “where we are free of our labors”, this could be Brautigan imagining a future where computers do all the hard work and humans relax. He could be seeing a future where humans have lost a sense of delayed gratification when he writes “and the sooner the better!”, right now, please!”, and “it has to be!” He also has two lines, “and all watched over/by machines of loving grace.”, at the end of the poem. This seems to be referring to something along the lines of a artificial defense system, like in I, Robot, or Terminator, where robots replace humans as peace keepers.

            There is also evidence that Brautigan had a pro-technology tone in his poem. He continuously has images of animals living peacefully alongside of machines merged into their habitat. In his poem he writes, “where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky.” It draws a vivid picture of a clean world where computers enhance our lives and help preserve the beauty of our planet. Brautigan writes, “and joined back to nature to return to our mammal brothers and sisters,” like he’s picturing a future where we can connect more with nature through computers.

            I think that the anti-technology tone is more convincing because the poem plays more on the fears we have of the rapidly advancing technology we are creating. When I read this poem I could picture things from bad sci-fi movies, where a super computer-like big brother is always watching us humans through mechanical animals or other devices.

Assignment 2 9/30/10

Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck”

Imagery:

·         Scuba gear	·         The myth of the ship wreck
·         Sunny sky-black of the bottom of the sea	·         mermaids
·         reef	·         sunken treasure
·         The ship wreck	·         Lone / nameless person

                Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” has many vivid images in it. There are two set of images, though, that work together to give an interpretation of the poem. The first set is the image of the scuba gear, corroded ship wreck, and going from the blue sky to the bottom of the black sea. The second is the sunken treasure and nameless people carrying a book of myths. One could interpret this poem as a reflection on how myths and different than the truth. It also is a observation on what humans will do to discover that truth, even if others have seen and recorded it before.

                The poem is reflecting on how the myths surrounding an event and the actual event differ so much and that many nameless people died in those events that create myths. It also reflects on the numerous people who discovered things before they were made famous. The scuba gear and transition from sunlight to blackness represents how the truth becomes lost over time and transforms into a myth. They also represent the expectations that people have of what something looks like. Those travelers expect an amazing site. The corroded ship wreck symbolizes the truth and actual story. It explains that the truth is not as glamorous as the myth and was much more tragic. It represents all those who died so that the myth could be created.

                The sunken treasure represents the hidden answers to questions about history. The truth is hidden behind the myths. It also represents the truths that are within the myth. In the treasure there are artifacts from a certain time period that can be used to figure out what was going on in that time and why people acted the way they did. It also represents our curiosity as humans. We’re always trying to find the truth. That enticing thought of discovering the truth behind the myth motivates us to do unpleasant things. The nameless people represent the nature of how a person must see it for himself before he’ll actually believe it exists.

                The poet is making a comment on human nature and the mystery of our history.