Throughout Sound and Fury, many Discourses appear about the deaf culture. These conflicing Discourses are shown in the disputes between the two families. Peter Artinian believes that giving a cochlear implant to a deaf person is destroying deaf culutre, while Chris Artinian and his wife Mari, were giving their child a cochlear implant to give their child more opportunity in the big world.
Deaf people are obviously part of their own Discourse. They live in a slightly different way because they can't hear. They need to rely on sign language to communicate, and being only a small minority of the world's population, gaining this amenity is hard.
This large Discourse can be split up into two smaller Discourses, which each operate on different discourses. One of the two Discourses looks down on deaf culture. They embrace who they are and what they do based on their deafness, but they look down on it because they yearn to be normal. They believe that with a hearing implant, they could be more successful in the real world. Chris and Mari fit into this Discourse in the video. They accept their family because they are deaf, but they want the best for their child. Therefore, they put him through the cochlear operation.
The other Discourse is the one that embraces deaf culture and believes that removing that part from someones life is a bad thing. You were born with what you have, and that is what you need to accept in life. This corresponds with Peter's tyrade when he says that giving a deaf child a cochlear implant is wrong becaues it destroyes their understanding of the deaf culture. This was the whole Discourse conflict in the video.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
J'ai peur de...
As I rode back from my maternal grandparents house in my Grandpa's new Prius, I wondered what I would do when I got home. Perhaps I would call my dad's mom and tell her all about my day. Who knows what I would do with the remainder of my Friday night. Thanksgiving had just ended, and excitement was in the air. There was much to do, and everybody in the area was up and about doing whatever it is they so pleasurably do. Unfortunately for some people, this is getting drunk at a bar and driving home in a snow storm in broad daylight.
I was the 10-year-old child that was in the center back seat of a small car going 60 miles an hour that snowy day, as a economy class convertible came screaming out of the other lane straight into the front of my Grandpa's new Prius. I didn't remember much as the car was destroyed and the ambulance came, but I did recall every minute of the three week stay in the hospital with many broken bones and other miscellaneous injuries, as well as the six months of pain that I was forced to endure.
This life changing experience ultimately gave me the phobia of drunk drivers/drunk driving. That day showed me how destructive the combination of a car and an inebriated person can be. It is for this reason that I will never for as long as I live drive while under the influence of any intoxicant.
I was the 10-year-old child that was in the center back seat of a small car going 60 miles an hour that snowy day, as a economy class convertible came screaming out of the other lane straight into the front of my Grandpa's new Prius. I didn't remember much as the car was destroyed and the ambulance came, but I did recall every minute of the three week stay in the hospital with many broken bones and other miscellaneous injuries, as well as the six months of pain that I was forced to endure.
This life changing experience ultimately gave me the phobia of drunk drivers/drunk driving. That day showed me how destructive the combination of a car and an inebriated person can be. It is for this reason that I will never for as long as I live drive while under the influence of any intoxicant.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
A Reflection on Storm of Steel
After perusing through my family's collection of books looking for a piece of literature that was instantly appealing, I had located a non-fiction title that caught my eye. I picked it up and dusted it off, and this book was 'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Junger. I normally like these types of war novels, and so I selected it to be my book. This novel is a sort of memoir of Junger's life, and it follows his experiences throughout his strife for the German Army in World War I.
Personally, I felt this novel to be a bit dry, as a majority non-fiction novels tend to be. It was dry mostly because the book was very nondescript of the things that were going on around him. He focused in mostly on his experiences. In fact, he was so nondescript that he rarely mentions any specific characters in depth. This made the book a bit hard to contemplate. At points, Junger would just write about death after death after death. Without any background, this was hard to understand. I theorized, after a bit of outside research, that Junger did this to signify just how monotonous and horrible this war was. Being stuck in a stalemate (as Junger was trying to prevent by being a stormtrooper) would have been as repetitive as parts of this book.
On another note, I believe that Junger wrote this book to signify the German cause at the time. After yet more background research, I learned that the author was a Nationalist in his country. He tries to glorify this in his book through attempting to focus more on the German part of the war through more description and devotion towards certain moments.
In all, the only thing that I really gained from this book was how to tolerate the reading of a non-fiction book. This book's blandness and devotion to German Nationalism really shut me down. Someone who could easily tolerate and understand those topics would find it a good read, but not I.
Personally, I felt this novel to be a bit dry, as a majority non-fiction novels tend to be. It was dry mostly because the book was very nondescript of the things that were going on around him. He focused in mostly on his experiences. In fact, he was so nondescript that he rarely mentions any specific characters in depth. This made the book a bit hard to contemplate. At points, Junger would just write about death after death after death. Without any background, this was hard to understand. I theorized, after a bit of outside research, that Junger did this to signify just how monotonous and horrible this war was. Being stuck in a stalemate (as Junger was trying to prevent by being a stormtrooper) would have been as repetitive as parts of this book.
On another note, I believe that Junger wrote this book to signify the German cause at the time. After yet more background research, I learned that the author was a Nationalist in his country. He tries to glorify this in his book through attempting to focus more on the German part of the war through more description and devotion towards certain moments.
In all, the only thing that I really gained from this book was how to tolerate the reading of a non-fiction book. This book's blandness and devotion to German Nationalism really shut me down. Someone who could easily tolerate and understand those topics would find it a good read, but not I.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
The Weird, Almost Perfect State
For my second choice essay, I read a rather peculiar article by Don Marquis titled 'The Almost Perfect State'. I picked this essay because out of the corner of my eye, I saw a reference to the Bolshevik group in Russia, which would inference Communism to be the main drive of the essay. This was not the case. The article, weird enough, was about how people should work as hard as they possibly can so they can plan out the last 10 years of their lives to be as debaucherous as possible. Marquis described this phase as the almost perfect life.
He believed that during the non-almost perfect phase of your life, you should live as prudent and sober as possible. He also then goes on to say that after your years of work, "[you] shall be the ribald, useless drunken outcast person [you] have always wished to be." Basically in Marquis perfect life, you get to #YOLO out for as long as you want when you're really old.
After Marquis has finished his details about this perfect end to life, he tells a very fatalistic tail. It is at this part where I believe Marquis to be a bit insane. From this point on, he rabbles on about things like Martians teaching humans things and kissing hot dog sandwiches. His writing style also gets more erratic, including many ellipses and capital locked words. He downgrades the style of the way humans do things on Earth, and then ends up saying that we all are nothing more than a low spot on Earth. What a cheerful way to lure in your readers.
He believed that during the non-almost perfect phase of your life, you should live as prudent and sober as possible. He also then goes on to say that after your years of work, "[you] shall be the ribald, useless drunken outcast person [you] have always wished to be." Basically in Marquis perfect life, you get to #YOLO out for as long as you want when you're really old.
After Marquis has finished his details about this perfect end to life, he tells a very fatalistic tail. It is at this part where I believe Marquis to be a bit insane. From this point on, he rabbles on about things like Martians teaching humans things and kissing hot dog sandwiches. His writing style also gets more erratic, including many ellipses and capital locked words. He downgrades the style of the way humans do things on Earth, and then ends up saying that we all are nothing more than a low spot on Earth. What a cheerful way to lure in your readers.
Response to 'Advice to Youth'
The first essay that I selected was titled Advice to Youth, and it was written by Mark Twain. The title speaks for the whole essay; it is all advice to the youth of Twain's day. Although it doesn't say in the article, I would suspect that the essay was probably written so it could be spoken in a speech or published in a newspaper. Most of the pieces of advice are things that parents teach their children nowadays. These teachings contain things like 'always obey your parents' and 'be respectful to your superiors'.
I feel that these things are fairly simple to teach your children. Almost all of the things that are mentioned are things that are hardwired into our brains from as long as we can remember. It made me wonder why Twain would write an essay like this in a time where I would think that discipline would be stressed more. I believe that this essay could have been in response to an increasing amount of young factory workers. During the time that Twain wrote this, factories were becoming ever so plentiful, and many of the workers were young juveniles. As these kids are obviously not in school, their hooliganism would be more rampant. Twain then obviously felt a need to write an essay to remind kids what it really meant to be an upstanding child in society.
I feel that these things are fairly simple to teach your children. Almost all of the things that are mentioned are things that are hardwired into our brains from as long as we can remember. It made me wonder why Twain would write an essay like this in a time where I would think that discipline would be stressed more. I believe that this essay could have been in response to an increasing amount of young factory workers. During the time that Twain wrote this, factories were becoming ever so plentiful, and many of the workers were young juveniles. As these kids are obviously not in school, their hooliganism would be more rampant. Twain then obviously felt a need to write an essay to remind kids what it really meant to be an upstanding child in society.
Is WikiLeaks Right?
The topic of WikiLeaks is a hot button in America. It gains access to many classified documents from around the world and posts them on Julian Assange's famous wiki. The governments that are being exposed by these documents obviously have a bone to pick with Assange. Many want him on trial. I would disagree, believing that what Assange and WikiLeaks are doing isn't wrong.
The way I see it, the sensitive documents that are being released on WikiLeaks are exposing the flaws that many administrations keep secret. These documents are being kept secret mostly for the reason that they are expressing something the government has done that is morally wrong. As this is the case, the people in the many nations have a right to know that these ethically incorrect things are taking place. I believe that allowing our government to keep these kinds of secrets from us isn’t right, and if they are unearthed, then so be it. Administrative secrecy has failed, and they must now face their wrongdoing with the brute disapproval of the people.
Instead of covering up the debauched, the corrupt rĂ©gimes should now be fixing their errors. In the end, this is what Assange is aiming for. By uncovering the shady governmental practices, he hopes to push the state towards practices that shouldn’t be frowned against by the people. The people are what will motivate the governmental change.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Reflection on A Vindication of the Rights of Women
I've been doing some looking around on some other student's blogs to figure out just what to make of this essay. I've got to say, I just don't really know what to interpret from it. I mean, between Mary Wollstonecraft's extensive vocabulary and the sheer length of the text, I got lost.
I could, however, identify her 'main idea' ("...why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence?") and some of her deeper points, but the finer details that she more than likely utilized were hard to identify. One of the deeper points that Wollstonecraft was pressing was the haste for women's education. She states that, "By individual education...such an attention to a child as will slowly sharpen the senses..." Throughout the third page, she affirms that educating women at an earlier age, like men, would give women the power to "think and reason". I think that this is one of the solid points of the essay, and her overall goal has obviously been achieved through efforts of her and people with the same ideas.
I guess that it was also hard for me to understand the article because we have a different mindset nowadays as opposed to back then. We now live in a time where women have a lot more freedom then they did back then, so understanding the strife became a bit hard. In the end, the points that Wollstonecraft made were all agreeable, and the article had pressed some issues that are no longer a problem today. That's a good thing to see.
I could, however, identify her 'main idea' ("...why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence?") and some of her deeper points, but the finer details that she more than likely utilized were hard to identify. One of the deeper points that Wollstonecraft was pressing was the haste for women's education. She states that, "By individual education...such an attention to a child as will slowly sharpen the senses..." Throughout the third page, she affirms that educating women at an earlier age, like men, would give women the power to "think and reason". I think that this is one of the solid points of the essay, and her overall goal has obviously been achieved through efforts of her and people with the same ideas.
I guess that it was also hard for me to understand the article because we have a different mindset nowadays as opposed to back then. We now live in a time where women have a lot more freedom then they did back then, so understanding the strife became a bit hard. In the end, the points that Wollstonecraft made were all agreeable, and the article had pressed some issues that are no longer a problem today. That's a good thing to see.
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