Friday, December 18, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Childrens' Movies For Adults
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Orwell's Vision Of The English Language
1. Argument: Everyone is corrupting the English language, making it become a set of prefabricated clichés by the use of ambiguous phrases and jargon and euphemistic words for political ends.
· The fact that Orwell ends the Operators or False Limbs section with “and so on and so forth” after saying that such anticlimax endings are to be avoided is ironic.
· Orwell begins to write political writing after fallaciously alleging that it is definitely bad writing is ironic as well.
3. Definitions:
· Dying Metaphors: These are worn-out metaphors which have lost their original meaning and merely exist to spare people the trouble of inventing original phrases for themselves (ex. Play into the hands of).
· Pretentious Diction: Scientific impartiality to biased judgments through the use of words like phenomenon, exhibit, element. International politics makes use of words like epoch-making, epic, and historic. Words to glorify war are based on archaic language like realm, throne, chariot, while foreign words and expressions (e.g. cul de sac, deus ex machina) are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Also, the replacement of Saxon words by Greek and Latin words for scientific terms because they sound more “professional”.
· Meaningless words: Words like romantic, plastic, values, and human are as meaningless as the word Fascism (as something not desirable) and democracy (as something good).
4. Some Habits Of Highly Effective Writers:
· What am I trying to say?
· What words will express it?
· What image or idiom will make it clearer?
· Is this image fresh enough to have any effect?
· Can I put it more shortly?
· Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
· Avoid lack of precision.
· Avoid staleness of imagery.
· Avoid the not un- formation.
· Let the meaning choose the word… not the other way around.
· Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
· Never use a long word where a short one will do.
· If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
· Never use the passive when you can use the active.
· Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
· Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
All Hail Whitman
In poems 11 to 20 of Leaves of Grass, Whitman is inclusively mimetic: He attempts to represent everyone’s reality. This purpose is epitomized in poem 15, where the author, or everyone, is describing everyone’s reality without trouble because all reality is his reality; from the “pure contralto [who] sings in his organ loft” (15), to the “old husband [who] sleeps by his wife, and the young husband [who] sleeps by his wife” (15), the author, or everyone, as he so explained in the first poem, is everyone and everything and every possible situation at once.
The Perfume
For an indispensable book of poems such as Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, it is prudent to give scrupulous attention to the first part. It is an introduction to what is to come, demonstrating Whitman’s style and themes so that we may be prepared for what is to come: Whitman is inclusive when he begins by saying that “What I shall assume, you shall assume;/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (1). He connects himself with the reader, whoever he may be, by saying that they are one and the same. When he says “I celebrate myself” (1), he may be, according to the fact that we are all one, celebrating that very connection. The fact that he is celebrating implies a social gathering designed to praise a person or event.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Beauty And The Bird
Gustave Flaubert’s description of objects and settings is utterly breathtaking: “He was called Loulou. His body was green, his head blue, the tips of his wings were pink and his breast was golden. But he had the tiresome tricks of biting his perch, pulling his feathers out, scattering refuse and spilling the water of his bath. Madame Aubain grew tired of him and gave him to Felicite for good” (Ch. 4). This description never tells the reader what to think of the bird: If you think that a green body with a blue head, pink wing tips, and a golden breast is ugly, then so be it. However, there is something about the description that makes us think of the parrot as beautiful, even if Flaubert doesn’t say so. Flaubert simply describes the characteristics of the bird and expects the reader to create their opinion of it. However, are we responsible for viewing the bird as magnificent, or is Flaubert sending a subliminal message to sway the reader to have an image of the bird? I believe in the latter. People appreciate exotic, uncommon things. This is why a multicolored bird appeals to the reader.