The poems “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and “Conjoined” demonstrate strong similarities between one another. The speaker in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” written by John Donne, emphasizes the eternal bond between star crossed lovers. In “Conjoined,” written by Judith Minty, the speaker emphasizes the hardships and struggle of marital ties. Both authors reveal deeper level insight into the realm of partnerships and relationships through the use of diction, imagery, and figurative language.
The diction in each poem helps develop the foundation and tone of each piece. For example, the speaker in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” describes the love of average men as “Dull sublunary lovers’ love” (Donne). The word dull connotes emotions of boredom and bleakness. It is mostly associated with situations that are lifeless and uninteresting. By using this word to describe the love of common people, he is ridiculing them and epitomizing their love with everything associated to the word dull. Not only is it being described with word dull but also sublunary. He is now mocking the potential of common love by giving it a limitation that cannot surpass the external heights of the heavens. Instead, this sublunary love stays within this boundary between earth and the moon, never to experience the celestial sensations of never parting love. On the other hand, the speaker in “Conjoined” uses the terms monster and freaks to describe the partnership of marriage. A monster is a creature that shows wickedness and cruelty. A freak is a strange deviation from nature. In this case, both these words contain a negative connotation that emphasizes the unnatural qualities of a married couple and the problems they encounter throughout their lifetime. The speaker is advocating the idea that marriage is far from ordinary and that all marriages contain their unique set of problems, problems which are able to extract and display the gruesome side of those in wedlock while they are tied to one another. These terms can also be described as modern or colloquial language, which allows the poem to be easily relatable and appealing to today’s audience. The diction in both poems helps develop the greater meaning of each work.
Imagery is also employed by Donne and Minty which further enhances their philosophy towards relationships. In Donne’s poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” the speaker begins to describe his parting as “two souls, which are one, though [he] must go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion like gold to airy thinness beat.” This sets up a very powerful image. With normal love, he believes that there are external forces powerful enough to break their bond with one another. But with the speaker’s celestial love, he states that it cannot be broken or breached due to the powerful emotions him and his partner share. Although there may be such powers that keep these two heavenly lovers apart, it will only stretch or expand their connection beyond great lengths, never separating once. Their love is chosen to be parallel the luxury and royalty of gold as well, a metal that maintains a positive connotation, instead of a metal of lesser value such as copper or bronze. On the other hand, the speaker in Minty’s poem, “Conjoined,” depicts the partnership of marriage with the term “an accident, life the two-headed calf rooted in one body.” This description embodies the tale of a beast defying all rules of human nature. Not only does it go against the natural laws of the land, but it also conjures problems for itself as well. Having a set of opposing brains along with two mouths makes living a constant struggle than what is would be for something normal. But marriage reflects nothing that is normal and the speaker displays that notion through the image he creates. The word marriage may sound sweet, but it comes with times of struggle and hardship that these two people must overcome together. This is an extreme portrait that parallels the ties of marriage and truly embodies its cumbersome nature. The images produced by both poems help illustrate the meaning behind the text.
Figurative language is another large component used in poems “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” and “Conjoined.” For example, the speaker in Donne’s poem goes on to describe him and his partner “as stiff twin compasses are two; thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show to move, but doth, it th’other do.” He is comparing his unrelenting partnership with his soul mate to the mathematical tool which is used to produce perfect circles. No matter how far apart each leg is from one another, how large the circle produced must be, the legs of the compass will always stay attached to one another. They work together in harmony to produce a geometric shape impossible with just a steady hand. And after the job is finished, the compass will collapse and both legs will come together once more, waiting for another task. Like the workings of a compass, partnerships only work when both pieces, both people are in sync with one another. They may drift apart by unbeknownst forces, but they will always stay attached and come together in the end. Similarly in Minty’s poem, the speaker also relates marriage to “the onion in my cupboard, a monster, actually two joined under one transparent skin…” and goes on to ask “do you feel the skin that binds us together as we move, heavy in this house?” Just as it is depicted in Donne’s poem, the partnership described in “Conjoined” is also coupled together in a more bizarre fashion. The onion is deceptive. On the exterior, it has the shape, feel, and smell of any regular onion. But on the inside, it is a mutant completely different from the normal. This is suggestive to the deception of marriage as well. A married couple may look a certain way on the outside, but the troubles and struggles they live through are the things hidden beneath. It is an illusion created for outside onlookers who are unable to see what is really happening within. The figurative language displayed by Donne and Minty imply the truth behind these accounts of relationships and partnerships.
Without a doubt, poems “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” and “Conjoined” display masterful use of diction, imagery, and figurative language in order to show its greater meaning behind the text. Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” emphasizes the strength of celestial love that cannot be broken by even the most powerful forces. Minty’s “Conjoined” depicts the triumphs of marriage and what it takes being joined together. They both shed light on different types of relationships and partnerships easily seen throughout mankind today.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Our love is celestial.
The poems “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and “Conjoined” demonstrate strong similarities between one another. The speaker in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” written by John Donne, emphasizes the eternal bond between star crossed lovers. In “Conjoined,” written by Judith Minty, the speaker emphasizes the hardships and struggle of marital ties. Both authors reveal deeper level insight into the realm of partnerships and relationships through the use of diction, imagery, and figurative language.
The diction in each poem helps develop the foundation and tone of each piece. For example, the speaker in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” describes the lover of average men as “Dull sublunary lovers’ love” (Donne). The word dull connotes emotions of boredom and bleakness. It is mostly associated with situations that are lifeless and uninteresting. By using this word to describe the love of common people, he is ridiculing their love and calling it all the descriptions I had listed above. Not only is it being described as dull but also sublunary. He is now mocking the potential of common love by giving it a limitation that cannot surpass the external heights of the heavens. Instead, this sublunary love stays within this boundary between earth and the moon, never to experience the celestial sensations of never parting love. On the other hand, the speaker in “Conjoined” uses the terms monster and freaks to describe the partnership of marriage. A monster is a creature that shows wickedness and cruelty. A freak is a strange deviation from nature. In this case, both these words contain a negative connotation that emphasizes the unnatural qualities of a married couple and the problems they encounter throughout their lifetime. These terms can also be described as modern or colloquial language, which allows the poem to be more relatable and appealing to today’s audience. The diction in both poems helps develop the greater meaning of each work.
Imagery is also employed by Donne and Minty which further enhances their philosophy towards relationships. In Donne’s poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” the speaker begins to describe his parting as “two souls, which are one, though [he] must go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion like gold to airy thinness beat.” This sets up a very powerful image. With normal love, he believes that there are external forces powerful enough to break their bond with one another. But with the speaker’s celestial love, he states that it cannot be broken or breached due to the powerful emotions him and his partner share. Although there may be such powers that keep these two heavenly lovers apart, it will only stretch or expand their connection beyond great lengths, never separating once. Their love is chosen to be parallel the luxury and royalty of gold as well, a metal that maintains a positive connotation, instead of a metal of lesser value such as copper or bronze. In Minty’s poem, “Conjoined,” the speaker depicts the partnership of marriage with the term “an accident, life the two-headed calf rooted in one body.” This description embodies the tale of a beast defying all rules of human nature. Not only does it go against the natural laws of the land, but it also conjures problems for itself as well. Having a set of opposing brains along with two mouths makes living a constant struggle than what is would be for something normal. But marriage reflects nothing that is normal and the speaker displays that notion through the image he creates. It is an extreme portrait that parallels the ties of marriage and truly embodies its troublesome nature. The images produced by both poems help illustrate the meaning behind the text.
Figurative language is another large component used in poems “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” and “Conjoined.” For example, the speaker in Donne’s poem goes on to describe him and his partner “as stiff twin compasses are two; thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show to move, but doth, it th’other do.” He is comparing his unrelenting partnership with his soul mate to the mathematical tool which is used to produce perfect circles. No matter how far apart each leg is from one another, how large the circle produced must be, the legs of the compass will always stay attached to one another. They work together in harmony to produce a geometric shape impossible with just a steady hand. And after the job is finished, the compass will collapse and both legs will come together once more, waiting for another task. Like the working of a compass, marriage only works when both pieces are in sync with one another. Similarly in Minty’s poem, the speaker also relates marriage to “the onion in my cupboard, a monster, actually two joined under one transparent skin…” and goes on to ask “do you feel the skin that binds us together as we move, heavy in this house?” Just as it is depicted in Donne’s poem, the partnership described in “Conjoined” is also coupled together in a more bizarre fashion. The onion is deceptive. On the exterior, it has the shape, feel, and smell of any regular onion. But on the inside, it is a mutant completely different from the normal. This is suggestive to the deception of marriage as well. A married couple may look a certain way on the outside, but the troubles and struggles they live through are the things hidden beneath. The figurative language displayed by Donne and Minty imply the truth behind these accounts of relationships and partnerships.
Without a doubt, poems “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” and “Conjoined” display masterful use of diction, imagery, and figurative language in order to show its greater meaning behind the text. Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” emphasizes the strength of celestial love that cannot be broken by even the most powerful forces. Minty’s “Conjoined” depicts the triumphs of marriage and what it takes being joined together. They both shed light on different types of relationships and partnerships easily seen throughout mankind today.
The diction in each poem helps develop the foundation and tone of each piece. For example, the speaker in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” describes the lover of average men as “Dull sublunary lovers’ love” (Donne). The word dull connotes emotions of boredom and bleakness. It is mostly associated with situations that are lifeless and uninteresting. By using this word to describe the love of common people, he is ridiculing their love and calling it all the descriptions I had listed above. Not only is it being described as dull but also sublunary. He is now mocking the potential of common love by giving it a limitation that cannot surpass the external heights of the heavens. Instead, this sublunary love stays within this boundary between earth and the moon, never to experience the celestial sensations of never parting love. On the other hand, the speaker in “Conjoined” uses the terms monster and freaks to describe the partnership of marriage. A monster is a creature that shows wickedness and cruelty. A freak is a strange deviation from nature. In this case, both these words contain a negative connotation that emphasizes the unnatural qualities of a married couple and the problems they encounter throughout their lifetime. These terms can also be described as modern or colloquial language, which allows the poem to be more relatable and appealing to today’s audience. The diction in both poems helps develop the greater meaning of each work.
Imagery is also employed by Donne and Minty which further enhances their philosophy towards relationships. In Donne’s poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” the speaker begins to describe his parting as “two souls, which are one, though [he] must go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion like gold to airy thinness beat.” This sets up a very powerful image. With normal love, he believes that there are external forces powerful enough to break their bond with one another. But with the speaker’s celestial love, he states that it cannot be broken or breached due to the powerful emotions him and his partner share. Although there may be such powers that keep these two heavenly lovers apart, it will only stretch or expand their connection beyond great lengths, never separating once. Their love is chosen to be parallel the luxury and royalty of gold as well, a metal that maintains a positive connotation, instead of a metal of lesser value such as copper or bronze. In Minty’s poem, “Conjoined,” the speaker depicts the partnership of marriage with the term “an accident, life the two-headed calf rooted in one body.” This description embodies the tale of a beast defying all rules of human nature. Not only does it go against the natural laws of the land, but it also conjures problems for itself as well. Having a set of opposing brains along with two mouths makes living a constant struggle than what is would be for something normal. But marriage reflects nothing that is normal and the speaker displays that notion through the image he creates. It is an extreme portrait that parallels the ties of marriage and truly embodies its troublesome nature. The images produced by both poems help illustrate the meaning behind the text.
Figurative language is another large component used in poems “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” and “Conjoined.” For example, the speaker in Donne’s poem goes on to describe him and his partner “as stiff twin compasses are two; thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show to move, but doth, it th’other do.” He is comparing his unrelenting partnership with his soul mate to the mathematical tool which is used to produce perfect circles. No matter how far apart each leg is from one another, how large the circle produced must be, the legs of the compass will always stay attached to one another. They work together in harmony to produce a geometric shape impossible with just a steady hand. And after the job is finished, the compass will collapse and both legs will come together once more, waiting for another task. Like the working of a compass, marriage only works when both pieces are in sync with one another. Similarly in Minty’s poem, the speaker also relates marriage to “the onion in my cupboard, a monster, actually two joined under one transparent skin…” and goes on to ask “do you feel the skin that binds us together as we move, heavy in this house?” Just as it is depicted in Donne’s poem, the partnership described in “Conjoined” is also coupled together in a more bizarre fashion. The onion is deceptive. On the exterior, it has the shape, feel, and smell of any regular onion. But on the inside, it is a mutant completely different from the normal. This is suggestive to the deception of marriage as well. A married couple may look a certain way on the outside, but the troubles and struggles they live through are the things hidden beneath. The figurative language displayed by Donne and Minty imply the truth behind these accounts of relationships and partnerships.
Without a doubt, poems “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” and “Conjoined” display masterful use of diction, imagery, and figurative language in order to show its greater meaning behind the text. Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” emphasizes the strength of celestial love that cannot be broken by even the most powerful forces. Minty’s “Conjoined” depicts the triumphs of marriage and what it takes being joined together. They both shed light on different types of relationships and partnerships easily seen throughout mankind today.
Monday, February 15, 2010
My truth in things.
Alright, so I just got done reading the article by Jim Neilson and by golly is it a long one. Although his article, “The Truth in Things: Personal Trauma As Historical Amnesia in The Things They Carried,” is a lengthy one, the quality of his notes compliments its quantity. It is filled with the utmost insight on The Vietnam War, American ideology, and Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried. I believe there are two sides to his article, each compromising the strengths and weaknesses of Tim O’Brien’s novel. According to Neilson, Tim O’Brien’s postmodern outlook has a positive influence on his theory of storytelling but has a negative effect on the actual truth behind the Vietnam War along with their culture and people.
Neilson, similar to Tim O’Brien, wanted to show people that the war fought in Vietnam “does not fit within the tidy perimeters of the ethnocentric, traditional war narrative.” He described it as a war “defined by uncertainty -- in motivation, history, strategy, official rhetoric, media representations, identification of friend and foe… It was a nonlinear war, with no objective to seize, no identifiable goal to achieve, and no overall end-date in sight." Before this time in history, America was involved in wars that had a clear enemy and a clear objective. Everyone was supportive of it and stood one hundred percent behind American soldiers and military decisions. But the Vietnam War was different. All of this confusion and uncertainty led to the so called “hippie” revolution and a broken nation full of unsupportive citizens. Many believe this incident was the birth of Postmodernism in literature. War veterans were finally coming home after experiencing a whole new realm of life. They were coming home to a land disappointed with the things they have done and the actions they have made. That is why getting over the traumatic experiences they had across the seas, in the jungles of Vietnam was not an easy task.
Neilson believes this is the reason for O’Brien’s writing The Things They Carried. He states that “The Things They Carried is an embodiment of the processive and indeterminate nature of consciousness; it seeks to replicate a veteran's struggle to make sense of war-time experience and memory.” He continues on saying “Stories are a means of overcoming trauma, a way of bringing body and soul back together… ultimately, The Things They Carried is O'Brien's attempt to sort through the pieces of his life to begin connecting his fractured self into a sensible whole.” But how true are these stories O’Brien is telling his readers? Is it all just a lie? According to Neilson “It is in this process that truth and falsehood, reality and representation, subject and object, fact and fiction cohere. Hence a true war story cannot be separated from its telling… For O'Brien, truth exists as process, as an act of remembering and telling -- truth and reality are inseparable from their imaginative reconstruction.” Stories do not have to be entirely true because “we use our imaginations to deal with situations around us, not just to cope with them psychologically but, more importantly, to deal with them philosophically and morally… It is the significance that we ascribe to stories, the meaning with which we imbue them, that makes them true.” But there is an element which O’Brien lacks in his novel. Neilson believes he fails to represent the history behind Vietnam and the people living through it.
O’Brien absolutely displays the postmodern aspect of storytelling and truths behind narratives, but fails to break down the walls that marginalize Americans from the Vietnamese during those times of war. This is fully embodied by Neilson’s statement which says “Ironically, in attempting to challenge the concept of an autonomous subject, O'Brien writes a text that is obsessed with self, that details the uncertain effects of an unreal war upon an unknowable self but fails to examine its all too real effects upon the Vietnamese.” I have to agree with Neilson’s ideal because “Rather than providing him with a means to celebrate ethnic difference and to represent a marginalized -- in fact, a brutalized -- population, O'Brien's postmodernism causes him to turn inward, to use the death of a Vietcong soldier to question the nature of truth and to celebrate the reconstructive power of the imagination.” He does show some representation of the Vietnamese by going into the fictitious life of a deceased Vietnamese soldier in the story “The Man I Killed,” but “O'Brien nonetheless overlooks the brutality inflicted by massive aerial bombardment and other advanced weapons, the terrible dislocation of the rural peasantry, the use of defoliants and other chemical weapons, the sanctioned slaughter of free-fire zones and the Phoenix Program… the rural Vietnamese self-identity was inseparable from village identity. Yet in The Things They Carried O'Brien seems unaware of the importance of this communal existence; the villages encountered by his platoon are homogenous, their inhabitants generic.” On a larger outlook, “the Vietnamese exist primarily as a backdrop for what is truly important to O'Brien -- an exploration of how the imaginative reconstruction and reconsideration of trauma may serve as a wellspring for literary creation.”
In the end, “O'Brien does not attempt to identify those truths about the war that have been obscured by nationalist myth and capitalist hegemony, focusing instead on the processive and paradoxical nature of all truths. Because of his postmodern sympathies, O'Brien fails to consider the larger cultural and political dynamics of the Vietnam War… The weakness of The Things They Carried… O'Brien does not contextualize his experience, does not provide us with any deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of this war, and does not see beyond his individual experience to document the vastly greater suffering of the Vietnamese. In so doing, O'Brien has constructed a text that, despite its radical aesthetic, largely reaffirms the prevailing ethnocentric conception of the war.” I think I made this way too long like the article itself.
“The shock of any trauma, I think changes your life. It's more acute in the beginning and after a little time you settle back to what you were. However it leaves an indelible mark on your psyche. “
~ Alex Lifeson
Neilson, similar to Tim O’Brien, wanted to show people that the war fought in Vietnam “does not fit within the tidy perimeters of the ethnocentric, traditional war narrative.” He described it as a war “defined by uncertainty -- in motivation, history, strategy, official rhetoric, media representations, identification of friend and foe… It was a nonlinear war, with no objective to seize, no identifiable goal to achieve, and no overall end-date in sight." Before this time in history, America was involved in wars that had a clear enemy and a clear objective. Everyone was supportive of it and stood one hundred percent behind American soldiers and military decisions. But the Vietnam War was different. All of this confusion and uncertainty led to the so called “hippie” revolution and a broken nation full of unsupportive citizens. Many believe this incident was the birth of Postmodernism in literature. War veterans were finally coming home after experiencing a whole new realm of life. They were coming home to a land disappointed with the things they have done and the actions they have made. That is why getting over the traumatic experiences they had across the seas, in the jungles of Vietnam was not an easy task.
Neilson believes this is the reason for O’Brien’s writing The Things They Carried. He states that “The Things They Carried is an embodiment of the processive and indeterminate nature of consciousness; it seeks to replicate a veteran's struggle to make sense of war-time experience and memory.” He continues on saying “Stories are a means of overcoming trauma, a way of bringing body and soul back together… ultimately, The Things They Carried is O'Brien's attempt to sort through the pieces of his life to begin connecting his fractured self into a sensible whole.” But how true are these stories O’Brien is telling his readers? Is it all just a lie? According to Neilson “It is in this process that truth and falsehood, reality and representation, subject and object, fact and fiction cohere. Hence a true war story cannot be separated from its telling… For O'Brien, truth exists as process, as an act of remembering and telling -- truth and reality are inseparable from their imaginative reconstruction.” Stories do not have to be entirely true because “we use our imaginations to deal with situations around us, not just to cope with them psychologically but, more importantly, to deal with them philosophically and morally… It is the significance that we ascribe to stories, the meaning with which we imbue them, that makes them true.” But there is an element which O’Brien lacks in his novel. Neilson believes he fails to represent the history behind Vietnam and the people living through it.
O’Brien absolutely displays the postmodern aspect of storytelling and truths behind narratives, but fails to break down the walls that marginalize Americans from the Vietnamese during those times of war. This is fully embodied by Neilson’s statement which says “Ironically, in attempting to challenge the concept of an autonomous subject, O'Brien writes a text that is obsessed with self, that details the uncertain effects of an unreal war upon an unknowable self but fails to examine its all too real effects upon the Vietnamese.” I have to agree with Neilson’s ideal because “Rather than providing him with a means to celebrate ethnic difference and to represent a marginalized -- in fact, a brutalized -- population, O'Brien's postmodernism causes him to turn inward, to use the death of a Vietcong soldier to question the nature of truth and to celebrate the reconstructive power of the imagination.” He does show some representation of the Vietnamese by going into the fictitious life of a deceased Vietnamese soldier in the story “The Man I Killed,” but “O'Brien nonetheless overlooks the brutality inflicted by massive aerial bombardment and other advanced weapons, the terrible dislocation of the rural peasantry, the use of defoliants and other chemical weapons, the sanctioned slaughter of free-fire zones and the Phoenix Program… the rural Vietnamese self-identity was inseparable from village identity. Yet in The Things They Carried O'Brien seems unaware of the importance of this communal existence; the villages encountered by his platoon are homogenous, their inhabitants generic.” On a larger outlook, “the Vietnamese exist primarily as a backdrop for what is truly important to O'Brien -- an exploration of how the imaginative reconstruction and reconsideration of trauma may serve as a wellspring for literary creation.”
In the end, “O'Brien does not attempt to identify those truths about the war that have been obscured by nationalist myth and capitalist hegemony, focusing instead on the processive and paradoxical nature of all truths. Because of his postmodern sympathies, O'Brien fails to consider the larger cultural and political dynamics of the Vietnam War… The weakness of The Things They Carried… O'Brien does not contextualize his experience, does not provide us with any deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of this war, and does not see beyond his individual experience to document the vastly greater suffering of the Vietnamese. In so doing, O'Brien has constructed a text that, despite its radical aesthetic, largely reaffirms the prevailing ethnocentric conception of the war.” I think I made this way too long like the article itself.
“The shock of any trauma, I think changes your life. It's more acute in the beginning and after a little time you settle back to what you were. However it leaves an indelible mark on your psyche. “
~ Alex Lifeson
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Here lies the truth behind storytelling.
Here goes another one for the blog. Let’s get it started. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien gives his readers a different perspective on a typical history subject, the Vietnam War. It is unique from other texts because he blurs the margins between the customary right and wrong, such as the enemies of this war and reasons for it. Many believe that war is fought between two primary groups, the good guys and the bad guys. In World War II, it was especially easy to distinguish this contrast. It was a war fought between Allies, the good, and Axis, the bad. But this fine line vanished once war erupted in Southeast Asia. It was the first war to split the nation in half, patriots who were for it and hippies who were against it. There was riot, protest, and anger everywhere. It was a war where “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (O’Brien 40). In the end, Vietnam War veterans were leaving the chaos seen in the jungles and coming home to an unsupportive nation. They were harassed by fellow citizens and called names such as baby killers. It was hard times for these brave men and their only way to get through such troubling times was to let everything out by retelling the stories as they lived them.
Within The Things They Carried, I believe each of the stories themselves reveal the central idea O’Brien is attempting to portray, which is the importance of storytelling. He fully embellishes this message in his narrative “How to Tell a True War Story”. There are many comments about storytelling that O’Brien delicately places throughout this excerpt. One in particular is about the truth behind stories. He states that “it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed” (O’Brien 71). What he trying to convey is the truths behind describing and retelling personal experiences and how they will never be exactly how it happened. There are too many occurrences going on that it is impossible for one person, for one pair of eyes to take in the entire experience all at once and to memorize the details of it. He goes on to say that “pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed” (O’Brien 71). When this happens, retelling a story becomes a battle between the real truth and the perceptive truth. What actually happens is only what the story teller believes to have happened. It is only coming from his one perspective alone.
He later states that “You’d feel cheated if [the story] never happened,” creating a moment of mistrust and dishonesty (O’Brien 83). But a few lines later, he reveals that “Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing many happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (O’Brien 83). In a way, this can be linked to the totalitarian society of 1984 by Orwell. People are persuaded to believe certain “facts” that are written and rewritten in the history books. After, they must force extract everything they believed to be true, which is now considered false, and throw it away and out of their mind. Their reality of truth is a manipulation by a higher power. That was a little off subject but hopefully you see the connection. In the end, it all comes down to the act of communication. By communicating through stories and language, we can allow other people to relate to our experiences and our reality. We want others to see what we see, to feel what we feel. By telling stories, we allow this connection to run from person to person and become an enormous network of emotion and sympathy. If there was an organization such as Newspeak from 1984, where their main goal is to destroy the written language and deconstruct our means of communication into simple terms, then there would be no way of retelling stories with such power and emotion. This is what connects people from every corner of the world. Communication is the key.
“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.”
~ Ben Okri
Within The Things They Carried, I believe each of the stories themselves reveal the central idea O’Brien is attempting to portray, which is the importance of storytelling. He fully embellishes this message in his narrative “How to Tell a True War Story”. There are many comments about storytelling that O’Brien delicately places throughout this excerpt. One in particular is about the truth behind stories. He states that “it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed” (O’Brien 71). What he trying to convey is the truths behind describing and retelling personal experiences and how they will never be exactly how it happened. There are too many occurrences going on that it is impossible for one person, for one pair of eyes to take in the entire experience all at once and to memorize the details of it. He goes on to say that “pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed” (O’Brien 71). When this happens, retelling a story becomes a battle between the real truth and the perceptive truth. What actually happens is only what the story teller believes to have happened. It is only coming from his one perspective alone.
He later states that “You’d feel cheated if [the story] never happened,” creating a moment of mistrust and dishonesty (O’Brien 83). But a few lines later, he reveals that “Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing many happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (O’Brien 83). In a way, this can be linked to the totalitarian society of 1984 by Orwell. People are persuaded to believe certain “facts” that are written and rewritten in the history books. After, they must force extract everything they believed to be true, which is now considered false, and throw it away and out of their mind. Their reality of truth is a manipulation by a higher power. That was a little off subject but hopefully you see the connection. In the end, it all comes down to the act of communication. By communicating through stories and language, we can allow other people to relate to our experiences and our reality. We want others to see what we see, to feel what we feel. By telling stories, we allow this connection to run from person to person and become an enormous network of emotion and sympathy. If there was an organization such as Newspeak from 1984, where their main goal is to destroy the written language and deconstruct our means of communication into simple terms, then there would be no way of retelling stories with such power and emotion. This is what connects people from every corner of the world. Communication is the key.
“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.”
~ Ben Okri
Monday, January 25, 2010
What is Postmodernism?
“See the cat? See the cradle?” (Vonnegut) This is one of Vonnegut’s most important lines in his novel Cat’s Cradle. And I strongly believe that it embraces the fundamental nature of Postmodernism. And what is that exactly? It is the idea that there is no such thing as absolute truth.
Well, let me explain more about this line from Vonnegut. It is referring to a game called cat’s cradle where series of string figures are created between a set of hands. As the game continues, the string pattern becomes complex and the entangling of lines seem never ending. This is a physical description of a cat’s cradle. I believe there is much more to it than that. A cat’s cradle also represents an outlook on truth and difference.
How we see inside the cat’s cradle is how we see the truth. And truth is represented differently by all people. Look at the society of World State in Huxley’s Brave New World. There are buildings that exceed the clouds. Their population is produced by a manufacturing line. And promiscuity between couples is encouraged. The truth I know tells me that buildings are safest low to the ground, people are not produced but created between two people that love each other very much, and promiscuity definitely is not the best way to exercise trust within a relationship. But this is how the people in Huxley’s book represent truth. This is what they see inside the cat’s cradle.
In the end, people all over there world will always have their differences. Whether it their way of life or the religion they believe, we should be accepting of it. Their view inside the cat’s cradle will always be different from ours. What it really comes down to is that there actually is "No damn cat, and no damn cradle" (Vonnegut).
"There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything."
~ Twyla Tharp
Well, let me explain more about this line from Vonnegut. It is referring to a game called cat’s cradle where series of string figures are created between a set of hands. As the game continues, the string pattern becomes complex and the entangling of lines seem never ending. This is a physical description of a cat’s cradle. I believe there is much more to it than that. A cat’s cradle also represents an outlook on truth and difference.
How we see inside the cat’s cradle is how we see the truth. And truth is represented differently by all people. Look at the society of World State in Huxley’s Brave New World. There are buildings that exceed the clouds. Their population is produced by a manufacturing line. And promiscuity between couples is encouraged. The truth I know tells me that buildings are safest low to the ground, people are not produced but created between two people that love each other very much, and promiscuity definitely is not the best way to exercise trust within a relationship. But this is how the people in Huxley’s book represent truth. This is what they see inside the cat’s cradle.
In the end, people all over there world will always have their differences. Whether it their way of life or the religion they believe, we should be accepting of it. Their view inside the cat’s cradle will always be different from ours. What it really comes down to is that there actually is "No damn cat, and no damn cradle" (Vonnegut).
"There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything."
~ Twyla Tharp
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