Blogging Around

First I read Stephanie's What If? post about what would happen if there was a newly discovered continent today with people that were different (similar to Heart of Darkness). The idea intrigued me and made me think.

Stephanie:
Thank you so much for bringing this up, I completely agree. Even though we view ourselves as highly advanced, and despite the fact that we hope that our society has learned from its mistakes, we must remember that time and time again those assumptions have proven false. If those purple people did turn out to be sitting on an oil reserve I would be surprised if the U.S., China, Germany, Great Britain, Japan (or anyone else in the global gang) did not exploit them. It would be imperialism all over again, and we thought we had moved past that. Although there is more education and knowledge flow than ever before in this day and age, we cannot say with certainty that there would be acceptance of an unknown civilization. Humans are by nature afraid of the unknown, and when humans are afraid they tend to do stupid things (that they apologize for 20-30 years after the fact). Anyway, I also agree that people tend to forget that other people have feelings these days. In a fast paced society where less and less is being done face to face, it is understandable. Treating someone inhumanly though, is completely out of line. So that secret continent with purple people should hope to stay hidden for a couple more hundred years!
-Tessa

After Stephanie's blog, I read Daniel's Best of Week: Story Fragments blog. He had a personal way of writing that I enjoyed and explained the fragmented story concept very well.

Daniel:
While reading your blog, I really enjoyed this post. You have a writing style in your blogs that is personal and informative (and very effective). I agree completely with you on the fact that widowed images are great ways to get into a story. I am also intrigued by the fact that widowed images stick with such clarity and interest to people. I like your idea that by writing about these widowed images, and exploring them, we can discover perhaps why we remember them, or more depth to what we already know. A short story is an exploration and an expression and these fragments we hold so tightly on are worth putting into those works. I had never thought to use these images in different contexts other than writing but now that you brought it up I think I will, thanks! I stopped trying to suppress random ideas a long time ago, and what I find really helps is to just write them down and save them for later. Its nice to get them out, and even when you do, it also helps you discover more about the idea.
-Tessa

Best of Week: Importance of Objects

This week while discussing Cathedral, we talked about the importance of objects. Even though when you think of an object simply, a chair, a table, a rose, a pencil, it is just a thing, an object. They are simply described by how they look. Objects though, are also what each person makes of them. A rose is not the same from one person to the next. A simple yellow rose can cause one sadness, as they remember their deceased mother's rose garden, but it can also cause one happiness, as they remember their wedding day. Things are a flurry of feelings to humans, and would have no meaning if people did not attach feelings and memory to them. If we did not attach feelings to them they would only be noticed in a moment of observance, but nothing more.
How could you explain an object to someone that had never seen one before, had never experienced it before? You could say it is yellow, small, pretty. What else? To fully know an object, a thing, an idea, it has to be experienced. Music cannot be explained, art cannot be explained, light cannot be explained... they all must be experienced, and so must everything else in the world

What If?: Postmodernism Past and Present

While discussing the short story, Boys, the idea of the past and present coexisting and working together to create the things we experience came up. What if this was fully in effect? Would our lives be immeasurable... lasting an eternity but yet only lasting a minute? Would they become a twisted canvas, colors forever mashing together and creating a mess of inextricable images and shapes. A picture that you could stare at for an eternity or only a minute and see something different each second, but see the whole picture from the very first second. How would our society be different if everyone thought in this way? Would we have a better outlook on life, see the things around us and give them as much worth as they should be given? Would we learn from our mistakes? Would we see our lives as an endless knot of strings... people, places, ideas, all coexisting. Each string knotting and deterring each other as if to influence as many other strings as possible. Every second a new string, a new idea to add to the mess we had already created? Would the future become less important? If we could always see the things in the past would we have enough time to think of the future? If we did not, we would be able to learn from our past mistakes, but we would never have time to fix them in the future. We would never be able to move past our mistakes and look to the future, with our minds always stuck int he past. There is a certain wisdom in living in the present, but all agree that living in the past is never a good idea, because you miss the things going on right now, and in the future. So for this postmodern idea to ever come to fruition in a positive way, the canvas would have to be special... it would need blank spaces. The artist, the thinker, would have to see what they wanted in those spaces, but know that something a piece of art does not turn out how it was imagined, things change. They would work with the other long dried pieces of the canvas to create a masterpiece.

Connection: Heart of Darkness and Model UN

This weekend I went to the University of Chicago's Model UN Conference. I was in the African Union and while discussing our topics it was impossible not to include the topics of racism, and colonialism. Both are important parts of African History and have forever shaped Africa and its people. It was helpful having read Heart of Darkness before hand, because it gave a comprehensive idea of what kinds of things happened to during colonialism (and that time in history) and where current thoughts on race and racism originated. The research I did for the conference, and participation in the discussions, also gave me a more rounded experience of the book. It make me think about the ideas brought up in Heart of Darkness more intricately, and then apply them. Conrad speaks of so many themes that may or may not be obvious, but something that can be picked up by all are the themes of confusion between the European and African people (along with racism and colonialism), which can still be seen today through many aspects of life in Africa and in European/American countries. Therefore, they complimented each other.