The Things They Carried Blog

I never know how to title these things but whatever. My response to this LOOONG essay by Jim Neilson is... huh? I am going to be completely honest i read the first three paragraphs like five times each and after that i said to myself "self, just read the rest one time through and then fill in the blanks in the blog." Reading this essay was alot like what Tim O'Brien attempted to describe about Vietnam. There was so much information to be read and such a limited amout of attention that could be payed to it.. (thanks to the t.v. and my VERY loud three-year-old brother), that i could not fully comprehend his contradictory words.. or were they.. idk like i said its hard wrap my head around. You can call me dumb for not taking an entire hour to read the essay and fully understand it but i felt that similar to the way Tim O'Brien did. He could only tell his story as he remembers, scattered. He had to put his experience into a cohesive story even though his experience in vietnam was completely incohesive. He didn't know who the enemy was nor did he fully understand why his country labled them as they 'enemy'. He only had time to read his chaotic reality once. This is my justification to not reading the essay repeatedly with my fingers in my ears and tunnel vision. He didn't why should I considering my house wouldn't be quiet before this blog is due.

... changing the subject.. NOW!

One thing I've always wondered and I've been wanting to discuss is how much information the author is actually aware of when a piece of art is written or created. I'm sure most of what they write diplays the meaning that they intend, but at what point do we twist the words into a new meaning that wasn't there when it was written. When people uncover the 'deeper' meanings in the book that i do not imediately see, i always wonder if the author meant to hide those meanings between the lines of his/her sentences or if they simply were unaware of his own 'deeper meaning'. Neilson draws attention to what O'Brien says about the nature of truth, "truth and reality are inseparable from thier imaginative reconstruction" and then he goes on by listing O'Brien's fragmented memories. These fragmented ideas are what i see as the meanings between the lines of a book, you can't find them clearly, they have to be in a way imagined or inferred. You have to draw on other words and ideas to find the 'truth'. Inferring is as true as the war was, Tim had to infer certain things that may have happened.

End of Blog! Seacrest Out!

postmodernism wrap up

This Blog is a little late because i was sick all weekend so now im trying to muster up the strength to get it done. All semester we've been discussing what postmdernism is all about. In 1984 we read how a society can manipulate reality. So we asked the question 'what IS reality' is our world controlled by the media, government or the people around us. The way i like to understand postmodernism is knowing that my ideas aren't necessarily wrong if they are not the 'right' way or the way of most everyone else. I really enjoyed reading what Jacques Derrida and Jim Powell said about the deconstruction of language, religion, and anything else that once defined me as a person. By establishing something as dominate it marginalizes everything else to 'less factual' or 'less worthy of attention'. Several examples come to mind of what is unnecessarily marginalized, but the ones that still effect me the most are the stereotypes givin to women. For centuries men were dominant and women were made to serve as a companion according to the bible. To me, I dont see how they are equal. Women were long marginalized by men. the postmodern era has given us some equality but not completely. Gender is a construction of society.
In Cat's Cradle, Angela says, " i wish Newt would take some lessons, so he could know for sure if he was doing something or not." This is one of my favorite quotes from the book because art isn't supposed to have a right way. Art is as postmodern as postmodernism should get... if that makes sense. Art should be an expression of mind and soul. To say your way of expressing your feelings is wrong then what IS right? There is no right. There is no right answer to anything. Virtually anything can be argued or replaced with an alternate answer.