Hey, I saw the cat, but I also saw a stroller.

     The general idea of modernism is that everything has its place, that everything has to be uniform. It's about reaching perfection. Of course, post-modernist theory is the opposite. Post-modernism believe that humans should color outside the lines of the norm. Like Voldemort thinks that Mudbloods and Muggles have their place, while Harry Potter wants to bring on the Mudblood and Muggle love. If you couldn't tell what I was doing there, I was trying to relate modernism and postmodernism theories to something awesome, but wait! There's something just as awesome as Harry Potter than I can relate it to! Yep, Cat’s Cradle.
      I have been reading this book for quite a while now and I have to say it's very unique. I truly have never read anything quite like it. For one, the chapters are way shorter than normal books and they have fairly strange titles. I mean, even at the beginning of the book, you haven’t even started reading it yet! It says, "Nothing in this book is true". This whole lying thing is an important theme in the book. There is a religion called Bokonon that is just a bunch of lies that have been told so many times, they have become truth. Any lie can become truth. Heck, 2+2=5 don't it? There is one truth in this world (and maybe not even) that there is no absolute truth. In my opinion, to address that in a book is post modernistic because all fictional books are made up of lies. The ideas or the emotion can be real, but it's all based off of a lie and that kind of thinking is considered to be postmodern like.
      Even the way the book is written is unusual. His characters are quite stranger than characters usually are. Felix Hoenikker was an odd man who never really cared about the human race mostly about his science and turtles, but he still had a family; that he never spent time with. He had three children: Angela, Frank, and Newt. Angela is a tall and emotionally awkward girl who really ever cared about playing the clarinet or taking care of her father. Frank, the middle child who like to make bugs fight each other. Newt, he's a midget. Also the character of Julian Castle who you would thing to be presented as a great man because of the things he's done is instead, "Castle wore a baggy white linen suit and string tie. He had a scraggly mustache. He was bald. He was scrawny... He forestalled all references to his possible saintliness by talking out of the corner of his mouth like a movie gangster". It seems to be a strange description if you ask me. I don't know how saints and gangsters go together. Plus the way the characters speak if definitely not the modernistic way. Talking to a bartender who likes fudge and a prostitute named Sandra, the bartender says about Felix Hoenikker, "'He was just one of those kids who made model airplanes and jerked off all the time"'. Not necessarily appropriate, but definitely funny.

I suck

Well all I could think of to write about is relating Brave New World to The Tempest of 1984..... That or the 'modern world vs. savage world' thing. I don't know what else to write in this blog. Yeah..... I suck. Why couldn't this be like The Tempest essay? That was so much simpler.

I'm the slowest quote finder in the world

WELL in a video I watched called RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms I discovered a few similar ideas present in the video and in Brave New World.

          One parallel is when Sir Ken Robinson talks about how society says when a person is smart or stupid. This person who is labeled as stupid might be brilliant but nobody gave them the chance to be. In Brave New World, they condition and forcibly make babies into whatever they want them to be, ‘“We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future… directors of Hatcheries”’ and the babies don’t get a choice. So if you’re an Epsilon, you can’t do jobs that need intelligent because you’ve been made to be too stupid to work it.

          Another parallel is about the topic of ADHD. Robinson states that because kids can’t concentrate on the almost pointless subject the teacher is explaining that they should be given drugs to help them concentrate. If they’re not given these drugs that means they are not sociably acceptable which is just like taking soma in Brave New World.  If someone does not want to take soma when they are upset, society thinks there is something wrong with them. The medicine for ADHD is supposed to make a person focus and soma is supposed to make a person feel happy. They are both not good for you and suppress a human’s natural trait.

T

            The world in Brave New World thinks it’s perfect. They make all the babies in little test tubes and decide what the babies will be before they’re actually born. If they will grow up to work a boring job that uneducated people usually work, they will put alcohol in their test tubes to make the person be exactly the right amount of dumbness to work the job. Then, so the dumb person actually will like the job they’re working they condition them to like it. For example, when the babies are born, they sleep teach them. There are little speaker things that whisper things like “You love to do the boring jobs” over and over and over. Now because everyone is conditioned to be happy they now live in great society. Or at least that’s what they think.

            By raising children straight from the tube, they demolished the family structure. By assuring everyone’s happiness, they demolished any form of deep emotion. When Mustapha Mond is telling students how impractical emotion is, he relates it to a pipe, “’Think of water under pressure is a pipe…. I pierce it once, what a jet!’ He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.” The first jet is supposed to represent when society was still able to have emotions. They believe that emotions used to be prominent and that they would control they human mind. Like if a close relative dies, would you be able to work that day? Of course not because the emotion would hold you back. That is the one thing this new world does not want. But if you have twenty holes in a pipe, the loss of your relative won’t be such a big deal and you can work without error. That is the one purpose of this Brave New World. With productivity, the goal of a ‘perfect’ world draws ever nearer

I must be a weirdo, because I liked The Tempest.

In the discussions of The Tempest, one controversial issue has been focused mostly on Shakespeare’s interpretation of the play. On one hand, views on post colonialism argue that Shakespeare wrote against imperialism and had sympathy for the character Caliban. On the other hand more traditional readers contends Shakespeare did intend to write for his audience and encourage imperialism. Others even maintain an opinion in the middle because they can’t decide which point they agree with more. However, my own view is that Shakespeare had two mind sets for righting his plays. He would please the audience but also subtly writes against the universal beliefs of the Elizabethan world.

There are a lot of different characters in Shakespeare’s plays that I think relate to Caliban’s debatable situation. One character I’ve mentioned in a recent blog was Shylock. In The Merchant of Venice, Antonio was the Christian character that Europeans would most likely side with and Shylock was supposed to be hated because he was Jewish. Another play that can prove that Shakespeare had sympathy towards minorities is Othello. Othello is African and of course back in Shakespeare’s days people of that race were usually used as slaves or known as ‘savage’. Othello is the main character (duh) and you wouldn’t expect anything to be written about an African in those times. A lot of the Caucasian characters didn’t like Othello and they tried to ruin his marriage (he was married to someone white) and then they also took him to court. Something that I found interesting was that when Othello got to court, the Duke let him speak and actually listened to what he had to say. This might be how Shakespeare wants people to be treated and not to be stereotypical. Or maybe not, but I want to believe that’s how Shakespeare was. So Shakespeare could have easily wrote Caliban with two mind sets: To please the audience and to please himself.   

The script of A Tempest takes on a slightly different point of view of Shakespeare’s play. The author Aime Cesaire seems to believe that Shakespeare was a post colonist. I didn’t really agree with this interpretation. When I read The Tempest, I didn’t see Prospero as a bad guy, but he just tried to do what he thought was right by teaching Caliban his language. Aime Cesaire’s take on the play made Prospero’s character a horrible person. Shakespeare did not intend for Prospero’s character to be hated, he was supposed to be loved. The viewpoint of the author was opposite from the viewpoint of Shakespeare. In A Tempest, Ariel hates Prospero just as much a Caliban. In the play though, Ariel is actually quite fond of Prospero and does not mind working for him as long as Prospero promises his freedom, and this promise he does keep.

Tyrotoxism

Hello to anyone who may read this!

            In the Tempest the character named Caliban is considered a savage and even sometimes referred to as a monster. People defined as savage are not accepted by a conquering country. They do not practice the same traditions as the colonizers. This makes the 'savages' seem deprived and unintelligent to them so they decide to teach the 'savages' their ways.

Prospero and his daughter Miranda did this to Caliban. Caliban lived on the island first. It rightfully belonged to him, ‘“As I told you before, I am a subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island”’. At first they were kind to him, taught him what they thought was truth and turned him into themselves. This isn't the only time this has happened though. Countries have been completely taken over and have been destroyed by the new mans customs.

I read a chapter from Literarcy Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice and it mostly focuses on the theory of what a savage is considered. I made me think of all of the suffering Caliban or any other savaged considered colony had to go through, "In its interaction with the conquering culture, the colonized or indigenous cultures forced to go underground or to be obliterated." Just imagine your whole life learning one way? Then foreign nations take over your land and go against everything you had once learned then teach you their ways. No matter what you do, they will always be right because they have all the power. Both sides have different point of views, “On one hand, the colonized observes two somewhat distinct views of the world: that of the colonizer (the conqueror) and that of himself or herself (the colonized, the one who has been conquered)”. Prospero and Miranda thought they were doing something right for Caliban but were they really? Did Caliban want to learn their culture? Before he knew words, he might have not had a choice to learn but now he despises them both for teaching him.

Also, I watched a video called How Hollywood stereotyped the Native Americans. This made me realize how similar Caliban is to the Native Americans. Even though they technically owned the land, settlers from Europe traveled across the sea to America and eventually forced the Native Americans to live in reservations. Because the Settlers took their land, the Native Americans fought back which caused the settlers to see them as savages.

Personally, I think Shakespeare was a smart guy. He knew his audiences and wrote for their understanding and beliefs. But he was two sided. In other plays he wrote, often times the slaves were their masters friends and were treated kindly. Also, in the play The Merchant of Venice, the character Shylock is Jewish and many people back then were not very fond of people of that religion. Shylock asks why is he hated so after being tormented and answers, “and what is his reason? I am a Jew…. If you prick us, do not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” This shows that even though the Jews were hated, Shakespeare wrote sympathy for them but in a way his audience couldn’t tell. This relates to Caliban because I feel that Shakespeare did the same thing. He wrote it so the idea of Caliban would agree with the time but secretly put his own side to why colonization was wrong.

This whole subject reminds me of The Danger of a Single Story. If the colonists realized that to the ‘savages’ they were the savage ones, taking their land and changing their customs, maybe it would have been a more peaceful time. All of the stories about how Native Americans will kill any ‘white man’, there were never any stories of how the ‘white man’ was killing all of the Native Americans and if there were, maybe the term ‘savage’ wouldn’t exist.

I wonder if Prospero is prosperous

 In The Tempest, the character Prospero has magical abilities. He can use these abilities to manipulate other characters in the story. In the first act, he manipulates his daughter, Miranda, his spirit slave, Ariel, and his ugly slave, Caliban.

Prospero is talking to Miranda about the incident that got them on the island. Once Prospero thought she had heard enough, he put her to sleep so she wouldn’t hear the conversation between her father and the spirit Ariel. This made me wonder how often this happens. Just imagine how much she misses if her father can easily knock her out. This causes her to not have any control over her life what so ever, but instead, her father does.

Ariel, the spirit, is completely controlled by Prospero. Prospero freed him from a spell that confided him for 12 years and now does all Prospero asks of him because he feels he is in his debt. Whenever Ariel asks Prospero if he can be released Prospero would remind him, ‘“Dost thou forget from what torment I did free thee?”’ Prospero convinces Ariel to obey him out of guilt.

The poor slave to Prospero and his daughter is treated very unkindly. He partially deserves this treatment because Prospero and Miranda pitied him and tried to help him. In return he attacked Prospero’s daughter and as a result, he is prevented to travel much of the island. Caliban has no choice other than to obey. If he doesn’t obey, Prospero threatens him, ‘“Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up.... urchins... for the vast night they work... thou shalt be pinched... each pinch more stinging”’ Caliban knows Prospero means what he says because he used his magic on him before.

I think Prospero is similar to Big Brother in 1984. He controls and manipulates everyone and they don’t have a choice to say no to him or else they’ll suffer the consequences.    

Danger of a Single Story

Adichie gave an intriguing speech about the human race seeing with only one point of view. She called this a single story. I feel that the topic of The Danger of a Single Story connects with the ideas of 1984. When I was younger I believed that Africa was a land where everyone lived in huts and wore almost nothing. That was what I always saw on T.V and read, but truthfully, there are many places in Africa that are not like that at all. The single story manipulates reality by only giving one side. Whoever reads that story thoroughly believes it because it’s the only thing they’ve ever heard and they hear it often. This causes our mind set to know only one side of the story, so it’s like having half of the history in the world denied to you. I think it relates to how the Party in 1984 controlled its citizens by limiting their information. The citizens only knew one side because the Party would destroy any piece of evidence that was against what the Party would say, so the citizens had no choice than to believe it. Now I know to be aware when I read or hear stories to remember that there are always different sides to every one.