Blogging Portfolio, December 10th

So the first semester is almost done, and it is time to do a little review on the blogs I have written this quarter. They have been classified in 5 different sections, where I have selected the ones I really enjoyed writing and portrayed my best work. Hope you enjoy and feel free to comment. 

1. Coverage:

Here are the links to all the blogs I was assigned this quarter.

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/10/silence-is-power.html

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/barbie-real-life-stories.html

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/struggle-for-equality-feminism.html

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/commentary-on-extract-from-handmaids.html

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/in-beauty-myth-naomi-wolf-describes-how.html

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-fiction-works.html

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/post-apocalyptic-world.html

2. Depth:

This category will lead you to two blogs I was assigned this quarter. I have chosen these two blogs because I think they show a depth of discussion and analysis. I really enjoyed writing about these topics and in both entries I made a link to two art pieces, the first one to ‘Guernica’ by modern artist Pablo Picasso, and the second one to a friend’s art work for Visual Arts.

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/post-apocalyptic-world.html

This entry is a response to McCarthy’s post apocalyptic novel ‘The Road’, in which I discuss how McCarthy conveys this post apocalyptic world throughout the novel through the use of diction and imagery.

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/barbie-real-life-stories.html

This second entry is a response to two feminist articles we read for the course, about modern Barbies and Teen Magazines.

3. Interaction

4. Discussion

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/11/commentary-on-extract-from-handmaids.html

My commentary on The Handmaid’s Tale received a couple of responses by my classmates, where they both agreed and expanded my ideas, apart from posting some personal ones they had. Although not made explicit in the blog, their responses made me realize how there are several ways to interpret an extract and how novelists are extremely talented by portraying all their ideas in various manners.

5. Xenoblogging

http://iloveenglishmorethananyone.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/love-necessity-in-the-lives-of-women/#comments

This section includes a response I made to Julie’s commentary writing on an extract from Margaret Atwood novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. I used this opportunity to present to her some of the ideas I had and how she described them in her commentary, but perhaps needed an expansion. I hope she took my ideas in a positive way!

6. Wildcard:

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/12/iop.html

This entry is a response to the IB’s Internal Oral Presentation. After completing two Presentations, I felt the need to reflect a little bit on the challenges it imposed me and how effective it was to my learning. 

The IOP

My experience with the IOP

The IB English course is very demanding, but very interesting at the same time. Finally done with my IOP, I will use this entry as a means of reflecting a little bit about this whole new experience.

In this entry I will by describing my experience with the IB’s Internal Oral Presentation, or most commonly known by my fellow ‘IBers’, the IOP. Just to give a little background about this assessment, the IOP is an internally assessed task, designated as a way for students to show their creative, artistic and dramatic side, while at the same time showing an interesting approach to analysis to a particular work, discussing how writers use specific techniques to convey theme. In order to start preparing an IOP, the student must start with a selection of topic, which range from Cultural Setting of Work, Thematic Focus, Characterization, Techniques and Style, an Authors attitude to particular works and an Interpreation of a work. Moreover, there is also a selection of possible activities, including structured dicussions, oral exposes and Role Plays.

In this quarter we prepared two IOP’s; the first one was merely focused on George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, and was really an introduction and practice with this assessment, whereas the second one was of free choice, where we got the chance to choose what we really wanted to do and which novel to analyse. For both occassions, it was very difficult picking a specific topic, and without any previous knowledge and experience with this type of activity, it was particularly tricky how to start preparing it and even how to approach it. For me it was also very challenging since I am not very good with public speaking, therefore I was somehow ‘forced’ into doing the oral expose since the other choices were more demanding in this sense, although I am very interested in drama.

Looking back, I think the IOP gave me more experience with public speaking and also an opportunity to look at the novels in ways I found very interesting and liked a lot, thus made more enthusiast when preparing it, specially the second presentation, in which I described how Margaret Atwood portrays the Subjugation and Dehumanization of women in The Handmaid's Tale, through the use of symbolism, imagery, diction and metaphors. 

I do regret however, not having the somehow bravery of doing a role play, since it would have really allowed me as a student to explore another way of approaching a novel. Nevertheless presenting my ideas in an oral expose gave me more security and confidence.

Overall, the IOP has proven to be a very challenging activity, but gave me important experience for the course and program, and maybe even for the future.

The Post-Apocalyptic World

Commentary on Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'

The Road is a novel written by American writer Cormac McCarthy, that describes the journey of an unnamed father and his son along a vacant road. It is set in a post apocalyptic world, where all civilization and landscape has been destroyed due to a unexplained cataclysm. However, the constant remainder between the father and the son that they are the ‘good guys’ that ‘carry the fire’ is a testament to McCarthy’s faith and hope in humanity among the present’s fears: terrorism, epidemia, genocide and weapons of mass destruction.

McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic world is vividly portrayed by his repetitive use of adjectives and nouns with very dull connotations in very simple sentences. Words such as dark, night, cold and grey, can be seen throughout the novel as a reminder to the readers to visualize a world practically dominated by these colours; no brightness, joy, warmth. But pure death. In the first few pages, McCarthy’s develops this dark atmosphere which he is able to portray until the end. His descriptions kept reminding me of Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’; work he finalized in 1937 as a response to the German bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica. As one can see from the picture, Picasso’s painting is dominated by monotonous colours; black, white, greyish tones, etc, as well as McCarthy’s description of the landscape. The dying people in Picasso’s canvas can be compared to the cannibals that McCarthy describes later on. This is the picture McCarthy painted on my mind. 

Guernica - Pablo Picasso 

As mentioned previously, the first few pages of the novel are key for McCarthy in conveying this deadly landscape to the reader; preparing them for the darkness ahead. His writing is quite simple; very short sentences, which although lack complexity are filled with powerful diction and imagery. The repetition of the words night, dark, grey and cold throughout the first paragraph is evident, and reinforces the idea of this dull, obscure and dead landscape and civilization. An example I particularly like is ‘Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world’. The fact that McCarthy has used the word beyond and more emphasizes the fact that the light and goodness the father and son might have is hopeless and futile when battleing against the landscape among them. The idea is further emphasized by the simile; the verb dimming describes the lack of clarity due to the darkness, thus the creating the idea that there is also no clarity to where the father and son are or are going, again describing the futility of their journey and maybe lives. In contrast, there is also a constant reference to light and life, conveying the idea that there is still seomthing good. Whenever the child or the father are described, their movements are accompanied by words such as ‘softly’ and ‘precious’, depicting the fragileness and importance of their lives. In the second paragraph, McCarthy writes the following: “ With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping”. What I found very interesting of this sentence was how McCarthy describes the light as gray, as if not even the light had life; it’s just gray, like everything else. 

McCarthy is able to illustrate such a dark and lifeless atmosphere with the repetitive use of certain words throughout the text, thus enabling the reader to visualize quickly the landscape he is trying to portray. And although the novel itself describes this post apocalyptic world, in which almost everything seems futile and hopeless, there still remains some faith in humanity. 

How Fiction Works

In literature, third person omniscience and first person narrator, are the most common and better options when it comes to narration, since they best resemble it, while others become closer to what we know as poetry or prose poetry. In ‘How Fiction Works’, James Wood describes the reliability of these two different types of narration, finally suggesting that first person narration is more reliable than third person omniscient narration.

Wood suggests that the unreliability of first-person narrators is actually quite reliable, setting as an example the respective narrators of Jane Eyre and The Remains of the Day. In both cases, there is a process of ‘authorial flagging’, where the novel teaches the reader how to read its narrator. However, first person narration is actually quite biased (thus unreliable). It only conveys one character’s point of view throughout the novel, which in some cases, although rare, can be very unreliable ‘genuinely mysterious bottomless characters’. For example the unknowable narrator of Hamsun’s ‘Hunger’, or the psychoanalysed life Zeno Cosini narrates. First person narration does not offer the reader the range of thought the third person narration does. With third person omniscient, the author enables the reader to understand several characters. Wood argues against the benefits of omniscient narration by suggesting that it is an ‘authorial style’ where the writer tries to almost impress his readers with ‘exquisite sentences and details, which are nothing less than God’s showy signatures on every page’.

Wood continues this chapter by commenting on ‘free indirect style’, term used to describe the omniscience of a narrator, and how the narrative ‘floats away from the novelist and takes on the properties of the cahracter, who now seems to own the words’. With Free Indirect Style, we the readers, are able to see and understand things through the character’s eyes and language, and at the same time that of the author’s.

In ‘The Road’, Cormac McCarthy uses free indirect speech, as well as an undefined third person omniscient narrator. The third person narration and the free indirect style applied in ‘The Road’ allows the creation of an even darker atmosphere from that already existent. The destruction and misery of the character’s lives can be experienced and seen by both of them, father and son,  also providing a detailed account of the setting from the author. This allows the reader to have a vast comprehension of the apocalyptic nature of the world created by McCarthy. 

The Beauty Myth

In ‘The Beauty Myth’, Naomi Wolf describes how nowadays women are specially tormented by personal and physical beauty, and the beauty ideals created by men as a way to expend women’s power, weakening them not only physically, but psychologically and emotionally. The Beauty Myth is social control, and a modern backlash against feminism, in which female beauty act as ‘political weapons against women’s advancement’. The ideas presented in Wolf’s ‘The Beauty Myth’ can be closely related and compared to those exposed in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood.

Our present Beauty Myth is based completely on aesthetics and women’s beauty. A successful professional career, family, and emotional balance, are not enough compared to the power that beauty might bring. As Wolf states in this passage, “Thirty three thousand American women would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal”. Regardless how trivial these concerns might seem and how much they matter, they are destroying women’s freedom and control. Women are tormented by their physical appearance. Wolf describes beauty as a quality that “women must want to embody, and men must want women to embody”. Although women had gained what they were struggling for; legal and reproductive rights, higher education, profession and opportunities, and a social role, consumerism and advertisement made beauty a “currency system”, creating a certain ideal to it that women desire to achieve. During the past decade, eating disorders raised, cosmetic surgery increased and markets that were as influential as they used to, become extremely powerful, becoming able to manipulate their consumers. Once women were stronger materially and more powerful, society aimed to weaken them psychologically.

Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, describes a similar setting, in which women living in the totalitarian state of Gilead are controlled by men with the sole purpose of providing the ‘divine womb’. It is interesting to see how Naomi Wolf also describes this as once being part of the ‘Beauty Myth’; religions that dominated the Mediterranean from 25000 B.C.E to about 700 B.C.E, Goddesses such as Ishtar, Venus, Cybele and Isis would only serve for the ‘divine womb’.

When reading this passage, one can identify similar ideas from Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. As Naomi Wolf claims that in our society, men impose their own rules and ideals in order for them to take most of the power, leaving women as an inferior being. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, the state of Gilead is doing exactly the same. In Gilead, men have created and imposed the different roles in society, the handmaids, Marthas, Wives, and Econowives, in order to break women apart. It is very explicit in ‘The Handmaids Tale’ that these social rules have torn women into very distinctive and opposing groups, where they hate each other mutually, thus resulting in them never getting together to form a greater power, but leaving them with a lack of not only power, but freedom. This manipulation of the psyche is key as a way to maintain and even increase power.

Another idea that struck me while reading ‘The Beauty Myth’ is how men try to undermine women’s power in society by creating harmless ways to express their creativity and passion. Take needlepoint and lace making as examples; these Victorian inventions were made in order to keep women occupied from doing anything else. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, it is this kind of activities that are allowed for women to perform, showing once again how men are constantly trying to take control of our society. 

Commentary on extract from The Handmaid's Tale

This extract from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ describes Offred’s memories and thoughts about love. It portrays her confusion and insecurity both towards love and life as a Handmaid through the use of structure, tone and diction. Structure and Tone depict her different attitudes towards love, while diction is specifically selected in order to create different tones throughout the extract thus emphasizing Offred’s confusion.

The structure of this extract is important for the understanding of Offred’s ambivalence towards love and life as a Handmaid. The principal characteristics of structure in this extract are the variety of sentence lengths and the manner in which the paragraphs are arranged. Margaret Atwood makes these differences so clear, enabling the readers to understand easily Offred’s confusion. Firstly, at the beginning of the extract, sentences are quite short, but as the reading continues they become longer and more intricate. Short sentences convey Offred’s fragmented ideas and her indecision, also creating a tone of denial. Offred starts the narration of this extract with short sentences; for example, “I don’t want to be telling this story. I don’t have to tell it” and “I could withdraw”. These sentences are very simple and short, as well as repetitive (applies only to the first example). It makes the reader feel as though the speaker were trying to make a point against an argument, thus also portraying her emotions, such as anger, and confusion. A transition is marked in the first half of the passage with the sentence “That will never do”. When looking at the passage aesthetically, the way this sentence is placed, isolated from the rest of the paragraphs, one can understand that Offred’s thoughts are taking another direction, and probably a change in tone of the passage as well.

The changes in tone throughout this extract also portray Offred’s change of thoughts. With tone, also comes the importance of diction; by choosing specific words, Atwood is able to create those contrasting tones. As mentioned previously, at the beginning of the extract, Atwood creates a tone of denial and almost desperation. The repetition of the words “I don’t have to” throughout the first sentences is key in conveying tone, since it shows that Offred doesn’t want to accept and is confused about whatever she is about to say, and feels that must not be obliged to do so. Another key word in creating tone at the beginning of the extract is “withdraw”, since it hints the idea that if she could, Offred would try to retreat from talking and communicating or maybe even escape, thus portraying her desperation in living the way she does.

However, as the passage continues, Atwood creates a melancholic and romantic tone with which the reader can realize that Offred, as well as many of the other Handmaids perhaps, long for loving a man again and being free. Diction is again very important in creating this, as well as imagery. Offred describes love as a “downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely”. This simile depicts very precisely how love is experienced by women; lovely and flying convey the romance and the passion that go with love, whereas dire, extreme and unlikely, portray the nerveracking feelings of love and its unfortunate events. The repetitive use of the word falling when refering to love also gives the reader the idea of the heavenly nature of love. Other key words that portray this tone are wonder, abstract and amazing, giving the idea that love is sublime. At this point, the structure of the passage has also changed. Sentences are longer in order to narrate the complexity of love. 

Nevertheless, the passage ends with a series of rhetorical questions, “Who know what they do, on their own with other men? Who knows what they say or where they are likely to go? Who can tell what they really are?... What if he doesn’t love me?”. The fact that the extract ends with the speaker wondering about these ideas, allows the reader to finally see that the dominating feeling she has is confusion and instability.

The Struggle for Equality - Feminism

In ‘Blame it on Feminism’, Susan Faludi discusses how in their struggle for equality and freedom, women have actually found misery and unhapiness.

Our society is constantly reminding us that being a woman now, or over the past decades, is ‘good fortune’; we have opportunities women did not have 100 years ago.  We can study, we can work, join law firms, apply for credit at any bank. Any bank!. Nevertheless, there is the other side of the coin. Women have never been more miserable. Faludi says that “professional women are suffering an infertility epidemic, single women are grieving from a man shortage, and unwed women are hysterical and crumbling under a profound crisis of confidence”.  Women’s freedom and power, is the cause of their misery. “Women are enslaved by their own liberation”. So, why is only half of the truth portrayed? To some extent, that might be what men want to show, what they want our society and women to think. To believe women have made it, that we have won the ‘fight for equality’.

Susan Faludi’s ‘Blame it on Feminism’ conveys several ideas that can be closely linked to Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, dystopian novel that describes life in the fundamentalist Republic of Gilead, where women are valued only if their ovaries are viable. In Atwood’s novel, women are strictly monitored by men, and have no property of their own, since it was taken away from them.

My interpretation of the novel runs parallel with Faludi’s article, since she suggests that “women’s distress was an unfortunate consequence of feminism”.

Although in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ it is not quite explicit, one can understand that before the Republic of Gilead was created, women’s power and role in society was increasing. Take the main character, Offred, as an example. She had a job and a bank account that were both suddenly taken away from her. Women’s role in society was becoming so strong, that people began to feel the need of reducing it, or even going to the extreme and taking it all away. Thus the suffering of women.

Moreover, towards the end of article, Faludi describes a backlash on feminism during the 1980’s, period characterized for the government of American President Ronald Reagan. In her article, Faludi describes the existence of a younger ‘postfeminist generation’ that was against the women’s movement. By the 1980’s fundamentalist ideologies in American government led to a resistance to women’s rights, accepted politically and socially, finally passing on to ‘the popular culture. It is during this period of American history that the ‘backlash’ struck feminist ideals. This backlash is also portrayed in Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by the quick change in the mentality of the Aunts. These characters are supposed to train and monitor the Handmaid’s.

When comparing ‘Blame it on Feminism’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, one can see the background of the novel and how Margaret Atwood was criticizing American society when writing her novel. From my point of view, the ‘Postfeminist generation’ must have wanted to create a sort of dystopia for those women who were trying to achieve their equality of gender and freedom, since their ideals were inmediately argued and contradicted by the government. 

"Barbie, real life stories."

Both Gilman and Higginbotham’s texts discuss the modern portrayal of women and society. Barbies and Teen Mags, as Higginbotham calls them, create girls “fantasy life and extend their ambitions”, making them aspire to an ideal, which is somehow false.

Barbie dolls have formed part of girls childhood since the late 1950’s; a very westernized toy that ‘human beings actively try to mimic’, making it not only a children’s doll, but ‘an adult cult and an aesthetic obsession’. As Gilman says, Barbies portray this perfect woman with ‘white blond hair, burnt orange Malibu skin, unblinking turquoise eyes and hot pink convertibles; completely stupid, perfect, and of course false. I remember discussing with my parents about Barbies, and asking them why they did not buy me these popular and beautiful dolls; ‘I don’t like the image they show’, would say my dad. I thought it was crazy; Barbies were perfect and I envied my friends that would own tons of Barbies, hundreds of different outfits, the mansions, the convertibles, the jeeps, and of course the guy. I can now understand what my dad was trying to say, and I agree on what Gilman says; Barbies create a stereotype of the perfect woman, an impossible model for a girl to reach.

Because of this image girls no longer feel content with who they are or what they have. I quote Gilman here”if you didn’t look like a Barbie, you didn’t fit in. Your status was diminished. You were less beautiful, less valuable, less worthy”.

What about the other side of Barbie? Gilman gives a list of Barbies she would like to see in the market: Dinner Roll Barbie, Bisexual Barbie, Birkenstock Barbie, , Body Piercings Barbie, and so on and so on. Barbies that show what life really is about, that being different isn’t bad, but good, being smart, being voluptuous, dressing in your own style, not the pink girly way Barbie is, is something to be proud of and that makes each and anyone of us special. Not only that but that we can’t be perfect. A friend actually conveyed this idea through art, using a Barbie Doll. She called it ‘BARBIE, real life cases’. In her pictures she shows alcoholic, menopausic and single mom Barbies. 

It’s not only Barbies that portray a false perfect image to girls, but also Teen Magazines. These magazines also tend to create an ideal of a woman, where she gets the boys, is popular, thin and dresses well. Magazines like YM, Seventeen, Sassy, Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle in some way restrict girls to grow into their what THEY want, in order for them to sell. Thin girls that follow their restricted ‘seven day diets’, follow their advices after Love Crisis’, etc. What struck me the most is how these magazines contradict themselves. Higginbotham explains how teen magazines ‘tend to encourage girls to love their bodies, no matter what they look like’, however they only show ‘stick thin, flawless faced white models in expensive outfits’. Higginbotham’s title resumes everything ‘Teen Mags: How to get a guy, drop 20 pounds, and lose your self-esteem’. Because in this transformation and aspirations to be ‘perfect’, we lose our true identity, trying to become someone we are not but someone that society wants us to be. 

What happens if we don’t want to be like Barbie or the skinny girl in the front cover of Seventeen Magazine? These magazines should start featuring what’s really happening in the world, ‘show the whole spectrum’; not discriminate against any racial, physical or sexual differences, and admit that being who we are, we are just as perfect. No need to get the perfect guy, drop 20 pounds. Just be ourselves.

Articles:

‘Klaus barbie, and other dolls I’d like to see’ by Susan Jane Gilman

‘Teen Mags: How to get a guy, drop 20 pounds, and lose your self esteem’ by Anastasia Higginbotham

Picture:

Anais Freitas - 'Barbie, casos de la vida real'

 

‘Silence is power’

Both ‘Talking Back’ and ‘Sins of Silence’ express the suffering women have to go throughout their lives due to the suppression of family and male figures.  Although this issue is not anything new, I found them very interesting because of how each of these women, Bell Hooks and Mai Kao Thao, were educated by their families and how their cultures mold them differently regarding this issue.

I was personally more shocked by Mai Kao Thao’s experience rather than Bell Hooks because of her mother’s attitude, her education, culture and her decision to remain silent knowing she shouldn’t. Mai Kao Thao begins her paper by remembering her mom’s words: ‘always be a good, obedient woman, and smile silently to the bitterness of others’. Due to their culture, Thao and her mother would not ‘talk back’ as Bell Hooks did, thus accepting the condition they lived in and how they were treated. Her mother’s acceptance actually bothered me a little, since she was always trying to suggest that by remaining silent and allowing men to abuse of them, things would be much better since they could avoid conflict. Although both of them reamin silent, one can clearly see Mai Kao Thao’s real feelings. She is able to convey her feelings in a very simple and direct way, highlighting very strong words, leaving them as single sentences. She writes, ‘I was a good girl. Wordless. Humble. Obedient. A perfect Hmong woman’ and ‘I was stone. Silent. Hard. Emotionless. Nothing was going to hurt me’. The contraction between the words reveals the reality of her situation; how she, as well as many women in her society, appear to be, and how they actual feel.

Mai Kao Thao finally concludes by suggesting that if she were to break the silence, she would no longer be a good Hmong woman.

The most notable aspect of Hooks experiences is how women have seemed to look for each other for comfort and to destroy the silence, suggesting that ‘woman talk’, the name she uses to describe this, does give them hope. This ‘woman talk’ has also led Bell Hooks to look for further means of breaking the silence, finding this freedom in writing. I found Hooks story more inspiring since she has actually found a way back into society, not permitting the suppression of family and male figures stop her development as a person. 

Strange Meeting

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Jane Smiley's novel "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Novel". In the fifth chapter of her novel, titled The Psychology of the Novel, she discusses the importance of the development of the relationship between the reader and the writer and how a novel's basic substance lies within the emotions that are established.
Throughout the entry I supported Smiley's ideas, concluding that the psychology of relationships is one of the factors that defines the quality or anything special about a novel.
In this entry I would like to encourage you to read Strange Meeting, novel written by British writer Susan Hill, which in my opinion is able to portray Smiley's ideas regarding the psychology of relationships that have to be developed in novels.

I read Strange Meeting as a part of my previous school's curriculum. It narrates the lives of two soldiers who become friends while living the horrible experience of the trenches in World War I. I was blown away by this novel. The relationship Susan Hill was able to develop, both within the novel and between the characters and myself, the reader, was simply outstanding. From the first chapter one can feel the characters; well feel for them but also share their feelings and emotions. For a person like me, being able to 'connect' with the novel is the key in defining whether it is good or bad, and if I will or will not continue with my reading. I just encourage you, my readers, to give it a try. Although I haven't been able to find Strange Meeting in any bookstores near home, I shall tell you that I will be reading that novel again in no time.

Blogging Portfolio, October 5

Hey everyone! As the school’s first quarter comes to an end I have selected what I believe are my best blogs and comments. There will be an explanation as to why I chose them and what makes them better than others. I hope you like them, enojy and feel free to comment.

Ignorance=Manipulation, Power

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/09/ignorancemanipulation-power.html

I think this blog covers many of the aspects discussed in class and their similarity with dystopian novels read for the course, ‘We’ and ‘1984’. I really enojyed writing about this particular topic and article since it reveals totalitarian governments from the world we now live in, and I also consider it to be one of my best pieces. It also has a comment from Julie supporting the points I made and suggesting other ideas.

Manipulation of Truth – What is Truth?

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/09/manipulation-of-truth-what-is-truth.html#comments

As mentioned in this blog, the idea I had of Truth has become more and more complicated to understand and find a definition for it, but finally resolving in the conclusion that both objective and subjective truth are equally valid and can be easily manipulated. In this blog Adrienne and I discussed some of the points I had made in which I tried to answer some questions she had made.

For this blog I made a further research with some websites and books I used for a work I had done in my Theory of Knowledge class, where I had to define Truth. Here they are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology#Truth

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/

Reuben Abel (1997) Man is the Measure; A Cordial Invitation to the central Problems of Philosophy

Arthur Prior (1969) Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Xenoblogging

Ability to Manipulate Truth

http://hlenglishmonique.blogspot.com/2010/09/ability-to-manipulate-truth.html#comments

In Monique’s blog about the Manipulation of Truth and the Obejective Truth Presentation we did during class she claims that “one truth does not exist”, and makes a very interesting point about how it is in humans nature to lie.

She provided good ideas, but did leave the readers with some doubts about it since she asked some rhetorical questions too. Therefore I suggested her to resolve her doubts first and instead of rising questions to the reader, she should either answer them or approach them differently. I also proposed she linked her ideas with dystopian novel 1984.

Inconvenient Truth

http://sabrina117english.blogspot.com/2010/09/truth-hurts.html#comments

In her entry “Inconvenient Truth”, Sabrina also talks about Truth and its manipulation. She was able to develop her ideas clearly and made some very god points, one of which is a quote from a US divorce Lawyer which I really liked.

However, I had some questions which I later asked on her entry, expecting some of them to be cleared, or just to allow Sabrina expand her ideas.

Freedom to Write

http://iloveenglishmorethananyone.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/freedom-to-write/#comments

I found Julie’s ideas on Writing very captivating, since as I stated in my reply, it applies to modern education. We have been educated in a system in which grading is one of the most important things and we are driven by it. Julie’s ideas on how these grades and rubrics affect our freedom of speech and imagination are really good. And as I asked “Why should we be molded?”.

Interaction

War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery

http://adrienne-hlenglish.blogspot.com/2010/09/war-is-peace-ignorance-is-strength.html#comments

I really enjoyed reading Adrienne’s blog, especially this one, on Shin a North Korean boy who once lived in a Gulag or working camp. As mentioned previously, I found this historical topic very interesting to write on, and I felt that Adrienne was able to approach it in an excellent manner, also linking it with 1984.

I commented on her blog, and asked her some questions about it, since some ideas weren’t that clear, thus didn’t understand very much her perspective, specially that on subjective truth. All doubts were resolved once she replied. 

Discussion

Keep it Simple

http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/09/keep-it-simple.html#comments

In this entry I received a comment from my classmate Jorina, in which she was trying to solve her doubts on the ideas I had presented. Her questions gave me an opportunity to explain my perspective and how I did agree with Orwell’s ideas about a simple language.


Wild Card
http://javieraenglish.blogspot.com/2010/10/strange-meeting.html


This entry is just encouraging my readers to take a look at Strange Meeting, a novel I read this year which in my opinion portrays Jane Smiley's idea on the psychology of relationships novels should have, developed in her book "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a novel". 

Ignorance=Manipulation, Power

Comment on New York Times article 'Born and Raised in a North Korean Gulag' by Choe Sang-Hun

Dystopian novels such as We and 1984, tend to criticize governments and societies during the 20^th century, as might many novels, through the characterization of motifs such as repression, dehumanization, freedom and truth in fictional totalitarian governments. While reading the article from the New York Times about North Korean Shin Dong Hyok, and  one can see the motifs portrayed in these dystopian novels.

The article, published in 2007, talks about the life of North Korean boy Shin Dong Hyok, and his experience as a political prisoner in a North Korean prison camp’s torture compound. He was constantly exposed to executions, one of which was of his own mother and elder brother, who were hanged and shot by firing squads. In Communist North Korea, Labour Camps, or Gulags, were the home for thousands of convicts, criminals and political prisoners. Conditions in these Gulags are inhumane; elders and children would be beaten and tortured, and some also killed. But for people like Shin, this life is the only one they are aware of, thus assuming everyones lives this way.

Ignorance is power and manipulation. This argument is completely valid for Shin’s experience, and that of many other North Koreans and perhaps thousands of people around the globe who have lived under totalitarian governments. Shin Dong Hyok himself says so; he had never heard of Pyongyang, South Korea, China, America or even the North Korean leader Kim jong II. As Shin, people in North Korean Gulags are bound to ignorance; manipulation of truth. The hidden reality. Shin describes that he thought it was natural for him to be in a camp because of his ancestors’ crime, “I never thought it was unfair”. By hiding the truth, the North Korean Government was making sure that people would no longer believe or imagine the possibility of any type of external world, thus avoiding any revolutionary thoughts against the communist system, or even just the thought of overpowering the guards within the compound. This is closely linked to the manipulation of Truth described in Orwell’s novel 1984, where the State, whose leadership lies in Big Brother, is constantly ‘destroying’ the past, hiding the reality of facts. The main character of the novel, Winston, works in the Minister of Truth, and is responsible of revising historical records so the Party is always correct. As mentioned, by doing this, the Party is able to maintain absolute control over its people, avoiding any revolutionary thoughts. In 1984 this is also conveyed by the degredation of language into Newspeak, which is a simpler version of English.

Moreover, throughout the article, Choe Sang-Hun describes the treatment received by prisoners in these camps. They are also very similar to the torture done to Winston in Part III of Orwell’s novel. Yoon Yeo Sang, president of Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, says that labour camps in North Korea are one of the “most brutal form of human rights abuse”. People in these camps are “deprived of their ability to have the most basic human feelings, such as love, hatred, and even a sense of being sad or mistreated”. At the same time, Guards are told to “not treat prisoners as humans”. In Big Brother’s State, the proles are treated in that manner. They are not considered as humans, and are treated as a very inferior working class. Furthermore, prisoners who did try to go against the guards and try to escape, were interrogated and tortured in underground cells. Shin had to live this horrible experience after his mother’s attempt to escape. Tortures would include strip and hung the prisoner by the arms and legs and holding them over hot charcoal, leaving them with permanent scars and recurring nightmares. In 1984, the torture chamber in the Ministry of Love, or Room 101, is where the Party subjects a prisoner to his own nightmare, fear or phobia. In the novel, O’Brien says “the thing in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world”. Winston is tortured with rats, forcing him to betray Julia and believe everything O’Brien and the Party tell him. In North Korean Gulags, this also occurs in “revolutionizing zones ”, focused on “re-educating”prisoners. Those who survived long enough to complete their sentences were released; just like Winston.

Finally, another link between the article and the dystopian novels I have read so far, is the dedication to Propaganda, slogans and portraits of their leaders. As Sang-Hun describes in the article, in most of North Korea, camps and villages are decorated with “Communist slogans and portraits of Kim Jong II”. In ‘We’ and ‘1984’, the same thing occurs. Cities are filled with portraits of the Benefactor and Big Brother respectively, and Party Slogans such as “Big Brother is watching you” and “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength”, in Oceania (1984).

The connections I have found between the articles and the novels have made me realize how the totalitarian governments described in dystopian novels such as ‘We’ and ‘1984’ have existed throughout our history in governments like the Communist Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and still very horribly in Communist North Korea. What most impressed me however, was Shin’s final words in the article, who sometimes “wished he could return to the time before he learned about the greater world, without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea”. As discussed in class, Ignorance is power and manipulation.

Manipulation of Truth - What is Truth?

Since we were children we have been taught that we must say the truth, also believing that whatever we are told, we have read or studied in books or enciclopedias is the truth. But what is truth anyway? Who gets to say if something is true or not? In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, the concept of truth and the manipulation of it is one of the most important topics presented, making the reader reflect on what might truth actually be. And believe me, as a reader I have been terribly puzzled.

First of all, I will try to work on the definition of truth. The Aristotelian explanation of truth is “To say something which is that it is or of something which is not that it is not”. Correspondence theory, one of the three main theories of truth, states that the truth of a proposition depends if it corresponds to a fact; it must first be proved by evidence or an individual’s valid opinion”. For example, the proposition “Snow is white” is true if and only if in fact snow is white; leading us to the Pragmatic Theory of Truth, “truth is an agreement with reality”. Some might say that objectivity is essential while others might believe that truth is based upon people’s own beliefs, feelings and interpretations, thus is subjective.

Our presentations on truth in class helped me define in some sort of way objective and subjective truth, and how people can manipulate what one has always believed was true. Because we were argued against so much when presenting our arguments, sometimes we found ourselves explaining that we know things because we read it somewhere, someone taught us that way, etc, making us inmediately question the origin of such theories or statements. So, it all ends up being quite a mess (well for me it is), what in our knowledge, and life, is true? Is anything objective truth?.

With these presentations one could definitely see how between ourselves we tried to manipulate someone’s concept of truth, mostly scientific ideas and theories, and almost ‘destroy’ a universally known truth such as the conservation of momentum or the fact that we have lungs.

The manipulation of truth is also very well portrayed in Orwell’s novel 1984, where the the State is continually changing facts in order to eliminate any evidence of rebellion against the party. Winston is a member of this ‘conspiracy’; he works in the Minister of Truth, editing old reports, articles, etc, so that they would make sense once the State ‘changed the Truth’ in some manner. They are not only manipulating truth, but also hiding it, for their own political benefit. Furthermore, in Part III of the novel, Winston truth is completely shifted when O’Brien makes him believe that 2+2=5. Everything that Winston, and also the people in the State, have been taught, is completely turned upside down in a matter of seconds. Not only with math, but also with language, truth is manipulated in 1984. Because of Newspeak, words are being also constantly removed from their vocabulary, thus leaving things with no true meaning, maybe making them not true at all. For example, the aim of the State is to develop such a simple language so that the imagination of revolution is impossible, thus revolution or anything like it won’t be true anymore.

This whole idea of truth has become an enigma to me since it is very difficult to find a definition for it. However, I do feel that objective and subjective truth are both equally valid, also leading me to believe that truth can be easily manipulated since it might depend on people’s on interpretation of things, and persuasion and manipulation, especially in our society are easily achieved. 

Simple vs. Complicated

As said in my previous entry, in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell discusses the decadency of both our civilization and our language. For our activity in class, we mainly focused on the decadency of the written english language. As Orwell suggests we should aim for a simple language, and try to eliminate those bad habits we have become accostumed to such as pretentious vocabulary, metaphors, jargon, foreign words, and even long sentences.

The activity carried out in class was to modify four speeches given by some important politicians, such as John F. Kennedy, George W.Bush and Martin Luther King. We had to rewrite the speeches in a very simple way, which is what Orwell suggests, or in the opposite way, full of pretentious vocabulary, metaphors, etc. I focused on rewriting those speeches that were intended to be changed into Orwell’s “ideal language”, thus had to cut out sentences, remove any type of metaphors, etc.

At first I thought that what Orwell suggested was ridiculous, and that the way in which we expressed ourselves was fine, believing that by writing in that manner we described things more accurately. However, I have come to the realization that maybe it isn’t that way, maybe we can be even more accurate by finding precise words and writing in shorter sentences. We have been tought our entire life to describe things in that manner, ‘the more, the better; and the more complicated to understand, even better!’. This is the way I have written during my school years; essays, speeches, etc; writing a lot to explain one thing. Maybe it is time to start changing this; try to explain things so that people reading it can understand it easily.

However, if we are supposed to write only the essential, won’t writing (and reading) become a little too boring. We will only read the core, never the extra, the details, how people, authors, feel about that certain matter they are describing. The key to a good language in my opinion, is when there is a balance between the two, not too much but never too little. 

Keep it simple.

In ‘Politics and the English Language’, British writer George Orwell discusses the decadence of the English language and our civilization. Throughout this essay one can see Orwell’s desire for a simple language, one lacking metaphors, that uses short words and sentences, and that avoids pretentious words, like the use of jargon or foreign expressions. These ideas might have been the roots towards some of the motifs portrayed in his dystopian novel ‘1984’, where the State’s language ‘Newspeak’ is always removing words from its dictionary, making it simple.

Orwell suggests that the decline of language has political and economical causes, and is ‘not due to the bad influence of writers’, which is what people believe. However, he does reinforce that effects can become causes, explaining how our language becomes ‘ugly and inaccurate’ because our thoughts are foolish, but  at the same time, the ‘slovenliness of our language makes us have foolish thoughts’. Nevertheless, Orwell believes that our written english, full of bad habits, can be changed.

The arguments presented by Orwell are very similar to those portrayed in his novel 1984. Ostentatious and wordy language, achieved by the abuse of metaphors (dying metaphors), ‘false verbs’, pretentious diction and meaningless words, has led to the lack of precision in our literature. Writers can no longer express themselves easily and simply, and end up saying something completely different to what they originally intended to. The vagueness of English prose is the concrete melted into the abstract; more meaningless words, used to describe one thing. Orwell conveys his ideas on the decadence of the English Language in 1984. In the novel, the State develops ‘Newspeak’, ‘the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year’ by reducing and simplifying grammar and vocabulary. The totalitarian State described in 1984, creates ‘Newspeak’ in order to make it impossible for people to rebel against the party, since they wil have no words to describe freedom.  The idea is then ‘get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations’, using the fewest and shortest words.

The difference between what Orwell conveys in his essay and in his novel, is the totalitarian attitude behind it. In 1984, the simplicity of the language is to destroy the ideas of rebellion and freedom, imposing the party’s regime. Whereas, Orwell as a writer believes it is to reconstruct and improve our language, especially the written one.

In conclusion, the simpler the language, the better.

Don't judge a book by its cover

The Psychology of the Novel – ‘Thirteen Ways of looking at the novel’ by Jane Smiley

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover

As a reader, when I am looking for a new novel I usually pick up one that has an interesting title, a good overview and a nice captivating cover, which might even have colorful drawing or pictures. Judging a book by its cover? Certainly. Should we or should we not judge a book by its first pages or chapter, is the question, and maybe it is necessary, or it might not be. This is the main idea I grasped when reading Jane Smiley’s fifth chapter of Thirteen Ways of looking at the novel, ‘The Psychology of the novel’. The importance of the engagement and the relationship created between the reader, the author and the novel is essential for a novel to turn out well and make a reader achieve its goal and finish the novel he/she started.

Jane Smiley finds that the ‘basic subtance of imaginative literature’, the essence of it, lies in emotion, not reason, and although, once written, people will analyze, ponder, change, learn and know a novel, it will exist not as words but as “images with feelings attached to it”. As Smiley writes, “something in one form in the mind takes another form on the page, something in one form on the page takes another form in the mind”. The author and the reader both experience this pleasure while writing or reading page after page, the creation of a whole new world under their imagination.

After reading this chapter, one comes to the realization that one of most important things in a novel is the psychology of relationships. By psychology of relationships one refers to the social interaction between the author and the reader by means of a narrative voice, the teller. The reader must enjoy, feel comfortable and be drawn to the narrative voice and the characters of the novel. If an author is able to create this atmosphere and establish a relationship with his/her readers a ‘sense of friendliness arouses’, a sense of communication with one another. If the reader does not feel this, they will begin to question themselves whether or not to keep on reading. And believe me, it has happened to me, and it might have happened to you. We leave novels aside as soon as we feel we are not connected with the characters; we feel no closeness, but distance instead.

Sometimes, we never feel this connection and intimacy, but we cannot blame it on the author; it is not their fault that we cannot feel for the novel. Maybe we have different cultural background, or aren’t age appropriate, or perhaps we don’t feel comfortable with the social context of the novel. For numerous reasons we might leave a novel aside. But, as Smiley says, we might have to try to “get used to the novelist’s way of thinking and of expressing himself’. It is their novel, not ours. This incompatibility may take hundreds of pages to cease, in time for us to understand, learn and agree with the author, since anyways, a novel is their way to try to express their ideas and try to persuade us into their beliefs and theories.

This idea has also been proposed by Russian writer, Zamyatin, author of dystopian novel ‘We’. In his paper ‘On Language’, which I have discussed previously, Zamyatin outlines the importance of taking the reader into this fictional world novelists create, doing so by being able to reincarnate themselves into their own characters, period and milieu (physical or social setting). These aspects of a novel, as well as the narrative voice and perspective, are of absolute importance in developing the author-reader relationship. They also allow the reader create the novel in their mind, giving them a sort of ‘possession’ as Smiley sets it, since the reader gives it their own perspective and leaves to their imagination how they visualize what the author describes.

I am not a constant reader. I reader every once in a while, and only, as Jane Smiley has described, if the book grabs my attention and takes me to this fictional world. There is one novel which has definitely made me feel this connection, and that is Susan Hill’s ‘Strange Meeting’, a novel that narrates the platonic love (friendship) two british soldiers share due to their experience in the trenches during WW1. While reading this book, I was able to relate to each character, not because of the setting but by their character and emotions, both portrayed spectacularly by Susan Hill. And maybe innumerable novels have achieved in doing so, but this relies completely on the reader.

So, answering the question, should we or should we not judge a book by its cover? We should try not to. One never knows if the author might be able to persuade us into his/her beliefs and develop this reader-author-narration relationship and communication. We should try not to leave it up to a few couple of pages, but give it a try. 

Forests: The Shadow of Civilization

In ‘Forests: the shadow of Civilization’, Robert Pogne Harrison discusses the three universal institutions: religion, marriage and burial of the dead and their relation to the forests, which he finally suggests are the origins of our human civilizations. Harrison’s work leaves me as a reader questioning myself two main things. Firstly, why does civilization finally go back to their origins or feel the need to do so, and where do we, humans, stand – What is human?

Throughout the whole text it is implied that forests are an abomination to human civilizations. Although they are discussed to be the antecedent to human, forests represent the archaic world, a world of gloom, mistery and fantasy, where giants, creatures that appeared after Noah’s flood, lived with what Giambattista Vico described in ‘New Science’, as “Bestial Freedom” – a freedom from terror and authority. However, Harrison arrives to the conclusion mentioned previously: forests are the origin of civilizations, further suggesting that the order of human institutions is: “first the forests, after the huts, then the villages, next the cities and then the academies”.

According to Harrison and Vico, human civilizations and their ‘universal institutions’ are based on the forests of prehistory, and with the burial of the dead, men or so called ‘sons of the earth’ are able to return to its origins. Nevertheless, and one of the ideas that most caught my attention from this reading, is that humankind has found religion and divinity in the sky, and most civilizations from then have been ‘sky-worshipers, children of a celestial father’. Why then if we are so called ‘sky-worshipers’ do we have to find eternal rest in the ground? One of the ideas we came up as a group in our discussion was the adoration towards the sky is only because of pure curiosity, fear and perhaps even ambition. The sky represents to humans the unconquered and unknown world; a world that goes beyond what we know down here, and its inmensity overwhelms us. This might even explain the construction of the ‘Integral’ in “We”, the dystopian novel we read for the course, since the Numbers in the One State are building it in order to go to space and conquer new worlds. Another way to see human adoration to the sky is that it might represent the future, whereas burials denote the past and the ancestry.

Why then, do we feel the need to go back to our origins? (represented by the burial of the dead, one of the universal institutions of humankind). One of the conclusions one can arrive to is that life is cyclical, thus must and will go back to what it started. In his work, Harrison supported by Vico’s ‘New Science’, explains how it has always been like that, and how from animal or forests we develop into civilizations, but always will return to our origins. The idea of the forests and beast suggests the scary and unknown, what is out of our control, whereas civilization seems almost as a machine, no soul, emotions or interactions. What might differenciate us, humans, from these extremes, is that we have been able to form institutions and find something to which hold on to, our religion, matrimony and our ancestry.

Throughout the entire text, one comes up with the idea that mankind is always trying to crush nature in order to build its civilizations, and is according to Harrison the way it is, has always been and will continue to be. Not only it applies to Rome, “Rome can become Rome only by overcoming, or effacing, the forests of its origins”, but I think it applies to the One State in “We”, because as a nation they have grown overcoming nature, leaving it exclusively behind the “Green Wall”, where beasts and animals roam around like the numbers in the One State.

One of the conclusions I have arrived from this reading, is that ‘nature’s battle against humans’ and civilization’s need to go back to its origins, thus creating a ‘cyclical life’, are closely related to Zamyatin’s idea of infinite revolutions, since nothing is finite. 

"Questions of Conquest" & "Freedom and Democracy"

Conquest, Freedom, Democracy, Society, and Individuality. These five words reflect the main ideas portrayed by these two essays; “Questions of Conquest” by Peruvian writer and thinker Mario Vargas Llosa, and “Freedom and Democracy”. A reflection of both pieces of work will also lead to a connection to dystopian novel “We”, by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin.

I shall start by reflecting on Vargas Llosa’s work “Question of Conquest”, Llosa’s reflection and analysis of Latin American Societies and the impact of Spanish Colonization during the 16^th century onwards on them. My inmediate reaction to this essay was the realization that Vargas Llosa’s reflection was and still remains completely valid to Latin American countries, and also the bizarre feeling of identity and pride towards my culture. As I read the essay I came to realize and began to ask myself the same questions Vargas Llosa himself asks at the very beginning: How were the Spaniards able to conquer such a powerful, sophisticated, and organized society like the Incas?  Why have the post colonial republics failed to improve the lives of their Indian citizens?.

The key to answering these questions is unfortunately what enabled the Incan empire to grow from its sacred city Cusco to a vast Empire, which in only a century was able to dominate almost three quarters of South America in a territory they denominated  as ”Tahuantinsuyo”. It was the unification of their society and the Incan totalitairan structure which led the Empire to fall into pieces during the Spanish Conquest. The loss of their leadership (the capture and assassination of their Inca Atahualpa) left the Indians in confusion, indians who lacked the ability to make their own decisions, incapable of individual initiative and independence. Confusion. Desperation. Lack of authority. It was all it took the Spaniards to break down the system, to come through what we all kept thinking was a strong and unified society. Leading us to the question, to what extent is a unified society and a powerful and authoritarian regime strong enough to avoid its own destruction?

Isn’t this a similar case to that shown by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin in his dystopian novel “We”? Well, I think it is. The One State is the people, and the Benefactor is the Inca. Both unified, solid, ordered and powerful empires. However, one is destroyed due to this, whereas the other, although attempted to be destroyed, was able to persist.

As I read on through Vargas Llosa’s work and then move on to “Freedom and Democracy” I began to find a similar argument which I further on linked to “We”. That is the individuals powerlesness, lack of ability to question the social organism of which he is part of and the suppresion of spontaneous feelings and creativity, all ideas reflected and portrayed by Zamyatin in his novel.

Pre Hispanic cultures as the Inca, individuals could not morally question the society they lived in, and such is the case of individuals, like D-503, living in the One State. It is this feeling of having someone watching over you all the time, which does not allow individuals to have this notion of sovereignity.

One of the main ideas rescued from my reading of “Freedom and Democracy” was that listed previously; suppresion of spontaneous feelings and creativity, since it linked inmediately to my reading of “We”. “Freedom and Democracy” tries to explain modern era societies, like the American, that build powerless, isolated, anxious and insecure individuals, and the illusion of individuality.

The most important aspect to highlight discussed that guards a direct connection with “We” is the discouragement of emotions and suppresion of feelings in our society. This is done since we are little childs; our education has guided us through a path where we are taught to have feelings which are not entirely ours (lack of individuality), where creative thinking is linked to emotions and thought to be a sign of unstableness, unsoundness and unbalance, and where original thinking is discouraged. All these three ideas remain closely linked to “We”. In the One State, numbers are not “allowed” in some sort of way to possess and develop this creative thinking; if done so, they are believed to have a soul, and having a soul is to them, like having a disease. And everyone appears to be the same to te other.

This is driving me to another question: is the ability to develop creative and original thinking, freedom? Does our society allow us to be free? Or are we constantly driven by rules and limitations? I shall leave you with that thought too.

“Questions of Conquest” further reflection –

I just thought it to be interesting to make a further approach or simply to leave this reflection with a question mark to Mario Vargas Llosa’s work in the following aspect: “westernized Latin Americans, have preserved in the worst habits of our forebears, behaving towards the Indians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the Spaniards behaved towards the Aztecs and Incas, and sometimes worse”.

I just consider that it does apply to Upper Classes in all latin American Societies, conclusion which I have reached after my experience living in Peru for the past years. We have this mentality of “conquistadores”, and feel superior (as Spaniards) than the native population in our country. As Vargas Llosa outlines, it s mostly due to the huge economic gap existing between both communities, and while Indian peasants try to integrate in this modern and capitalist world, the loss of their culture, language, beliefs, traditions and customs are at risk, while they begin to adapt the customs of their ancient masters and “conquistadores”.