Cat’s Cradle is a very interesting book so far, and not only the content of the book, but even the layout of the chapters. The fact that each chapter is so short relates with the theory of postmodernism because of what we already talked about in class, which was the fact that society today is so unfocused that the author decided to make each chapter like an episode in a television series. This I believe is a very true statement because of the fact that at least for me it’s really hard to sit down and read a book and get everything it has to say. The way this book is written I believe will be a huge factor in my desire to reading it.
Now the deeper stuff. So far from what I’ve read I find it really weird how the story starts off by introducing this strange so called religion called Bokononism. The author describes this religion by saying, “We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a Karass.” These Karasses were filled with random people that usually didn’t even ever meet. Just as it says in the “Fifty-third Calypso” written by Bokonon, “Oh a sleeping drunkard up in Central Park, and a lion-hunter in the jungle dark, and a Chinese dentist and a British queen—All fit together in the same machine,” This verifies that anyone anywhere on Earth can be a part of a certain Karass. I’m not sure what exactly to think about all of this yet, but as far as the religion part of it goes I think this is whack and I don’t understand how or why the author would convert from Christianity to “the religion of lies”, but I hope this will be discussed in further reading.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Thesis
Alright for this blog we are supposed to elaborate on what ideas we have for our thesis statement on our upcoming essay. I’m going to be honest and say that I have not gotten very far in this book yet, but I am catching up I think. After saying this though, I would have to say that I would write my thesis statement on one of the most controversial issues in our class discussions: “Is our society today closer to the lives of the ‘savages’ or the lifestyle of what are considered normal people in the novel?” Of course this thesis isn’t final and maybe some other issues will arise and I will want confront one of them instead, but I have a feeling that most of the class will address this issue at some point in their essay.
The Dartmouth Writing Program website helped me to understand that writing a thesis is not all about taking a side and going from there, but instead to, “develop an interesting perspective that you can support and defend. This perspective must be more than an observation.” After reading this I noticed that this had been a problem in the past for me, but I think I have incorporated this idea into my thesis above.
Some other books I will probably include in my essay will be the Bible and 1984. So far this book has gone against many of my strong beliefs and I would really enjoy finding the true answers that I do not already know from the Bible. Also, this may help me out more in class discussions. But seriously I think insights from the Bible will enormously help my point of view on where we stand today as a society compared to the savages and the people from London. Another book I may end up using is 1984. I plan on using this book to compare and contrast the similarities and differences from these two novels.
The Dartmouth Writing Program website helped me to understand that writing a thesis is not all about taking a side and going from there, but instead to, “develop an interesting perspective that you can support and defend. This perspective must be more than an observation.” After reading this I noticed that this had been a problem in the past for me, but I think I have incorporated this idea into my thesis above.
Some other books I will probably include in my essay will be the Bible and 1984. So far this book has gone against many of my strong beliefs and I would really enjoy finding the true answers that I do not already know from the Bible. Also, this may help me out more in class discussions. But seriously I think insights from the Bible will enormously help my point of view on where we stand today as a society compared to the savages and the people from London. Another book I may end up using is 1984. I plan on using this book to compare and contrast the similarities and differences from these two novels.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
i finally made one!
Alright well I’m new to this blogging thing but here goes…
Why do cultures create narratives/myths? I believe cultures in the past used myths to explain events of their time, and what’s strange is that what we call a myth today was most likely considered factual in that time period. Anyways people then did not have any other way of proving a story to be true. Ancient tribes also created stories about their gods and how they received their power. This is an example of how their culture and beliefs were passed on and on. A negative example of this in Brave New World would be in the decanting room in chapter 2. “They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers” (Huxley 22). Now books and flowers may not be a very big deal to some of the babies but my point is that designing a human being to like and dislike things by force is not passing on beliefs but insisting them on everyone.
Postmodernism talks about Grand Narratives and what they really are. Basically what I understand a grand narrative to be is a large story that is made up and can account for a group of shorter narratives. A grand narrative can lead to oppression like in 1984 when it gives examples of the Soviet Union’s government and how they took control the people. This destroys the ideas of the minorities because they are too scared to supersede the authority of the government.
The novel can be a warning to our society today because it classifies savages as what we would most likely call normal people today in our society, and normal fathers and mothers savages. This is outrageous and way out of hand and I believe that it may be warning us against the effects of creating other human beings artificially or cloning.
Why do cultures create narratives/myths? I believe cultures in the past used myths to explain events of their time, and what’s strange is that what we call a myth today was most likely considered factual in that time period. Anyways people then did not have any other way of proving a story to be true. Ancient tribes also created stories about their gods and how they received their power. This is an example of how their culture and beliefs were passed on and on. A negative example of this in Brave New World would be in the decanting room in chapter 2. “They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers” (Huxley 22). Now books and flowers may not be a very big deal to some of the babies but my point is that designing a human being to like and dislike things by force is not passing on beliefs but insisting them on everyone.
Postmodernism talks about Grand Narratives and what they really are. Basically what I understand a grand narrative to be is a large story that is made up and can account for a group of shorter narratives. A grand narrative can lead to oppression like in 1984 when it gives examples of the Soviet Union’s government and how they took control the people. This destroys the ideas of the minorities because they are too scared to supersede the authority of the government.
The novel can be a warning to our society today because it classifies savages as what we would most likely call normal people today in our society, and normal fathers and mothers savages. This is outrageous and way out of hand and I believe that it may be warning us against the effects of creating other human beings artificially or cloning.
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