Irony And Sarcasm With Swift

It seems in chapter VI as if there was no end to the mockery. Swift criticizes many aspects of life in this chapter and he also makes fun of things that we don’t even give consideration to.

“…but their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans, nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians, nor from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of the paper to the other…” (Swift, 32) here I think that Swift is using lists as a way to show the magnitude of language variations and how none of the many different ways we have worked. I think it might be a way to make fun of the lack of effectiveness of humans and at how we just cannot come to an agreement and all decide on one manner to do things but rather have a million different ways to do each thing.

“They bury their dead with their heads directly downward…the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready
standing on their feet.” (Swift, 33) This sounds funny as you read it because logic tells us first that the world is not flat and second that even if it was it would still not have flipped around. It seems a little silly to believe in this, but I think the point that the author is trying to make is that we have the seem ideas that to others might seem weird and even pathetic based just on faith and tradition.

“There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should be tempted to say a little in their justification.” (Swift, 33) Following Swift describes things that, in the case that the world was just and honest, should be very important to us. However our society thinks opposite of many of these ideals, although we proclaim that we don’t, and this is the point that Swift is trying to get across to the reader.

“...they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise employed.” (Swift, 35) This passage is damp with irony and sarcasm, presenting the option of children not wanting to be in the world because of the bad place it is and saying that bringing children into the world is not something that they should thank their parents for but rather hate them for. This option is something that most people don’t consider and that is why it seems like a crazy idea.

Casual v. Serious

There are many differences between the three feature articles that we read, The Cost Cunundrum, Heeeer’s…Conan!, and JA, but the thing that struck me as the most different was the tone in which each of the articles was written. The Cost Cunundrum was an article that talked about health care in the United States and used facts and numbers to prove a point. Heeeer’s…Conan! Talked related the last moments of The Late Show and how the transition to The Tonight Show was taking place. JA was a piece that retold the life and experiences of a graffiti artist named JA. The first had a serious and punctual tone, the second had a nostalgic and sentimental tone, and the last one had a casual and factual tone. However, while each of these articles told a very different story in very different ways they were all clearly informative articles that were telling a story. I thought that it was very interesting to see how three different topics that can be as varied as you can get all registered as news in my brain regardless of the fact that none of them had anything in common. I think that reading these articles helped me notice that the point of a feature article is that it states something that people don’t know and that it manages to capture people’s attention while it does it. If I were to write a feature article now I would feel that I had a lot more freedom in regards to what subject I was covering and to the style that I was using to write the news because know I know that not all news have to be serious. A piece can be written casually and be understood as well as if it was written in a serious tone. Another thing that I saw is that each piece comes from a different place. I usually look at the same site for all my news, but I noticed that it might be really good to switch it up a bit and look at new sources or at a big list of them so I can get news on all areas and also in all styles s that reading does not become stale.

MacBeth Festival

I have always said that I like the classes where we do morew than only read and write, those where we get to use our creativity to learn. I think that having a MacBeth festival where we acted out the most importnat scenes of the play was a great way to do this. I really appriciated the opportunity to do something different and to apply what we had learned about composition to our plays. I only got to act and could not see any of the other plays, but still I imagine that it was very interesting to see how each group interpretated their characters. It was very nice to see that some people saw Lady MacBeth as an evil, power thirsty person while others saw her as a loving wife who felt remorse for what she was doing. I hope that we get to do more activities such as these and that as we have been doing through the year we make posters, presentation, etc. to keep the class interesting. I did not see the scenes as i mentiones before, but I am sure that they were all very good because people had been focusing on practicing the play and learning the lines to make it a good scene.

The Search For Satire

As I read Gulliver’s Travels I started to get worried about something, which, in all honesty, makes me doubt whether or not I am good with literature. Do I understand satire? Does parody make any sense to me? I would love to think that it does because that makes me feel like a cultured person. However I had the same feeling that I have now as I read Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy. I cannot lie by saying that it inspired laughter in me. I did not see almost any comedic sense on this work. With the present book I have laughed and I have seen parody, but some times pages keep on going on and I find nothing that could be a parody. This makes me doubt if the problem lies with me because I am sure that other people find something that makes fun of something else every two minutes. I felt compelled, thus, to share some of the things that I found funny in hopes of being corrected if I am wrong and learning more about satire and close reading.

The first obvious irony can be seen when the six inch Lilliput’s imprison the six foot Gulliver. One thing that I found very funny was the description of a watch that was made by the two Lilliputian officers in the inventory to the King. Here they say that they think that it is the object of his worship because “he seldom did any Thing without consulting it…he said that it pointed out the time for every action of his life.” (Swift, 14) I thought that this was funny because if you have never heard of a watch and someone tells you that this is what it is for, then you would probably get the impression that they are talking about a God because it seems so important. However we know that they are describing an apparatus that tells time, and I think that the parody is at society that pays more attention to time and lets that rule our life rather than to a God. We are, in a way, giving more importance to a material object than to a deity which is a little absurd, or at least it was in the time were the church was the center of life or had been recently. Another thing that I thought was a parody was the way the people of court got their jobs and their positions, by dancing on ropes and playing a game that sounded like how low can you go. I think this was mocking the nepotistic system that is applied at courts and how the King would chose whomever he liked for jobs that should be chosen by a meticulous process. Then another part that I liked and laughed was where he described how Gulliver had to swear loyalty, “hold my right foot in my left hand, to place the middle finger of my right hand on the crown of my head, and my thumb on the tip of my right ear.” (Swift, 20) Here the pure absurdity of the way we use gestures and movements, such as the locking of pinkies, to seal a deal is shown to us because we think upon reading the description that the are crazy but it is really no different to what we do. The other very direct mock is when he describes the fact that the small island might go to war with their neighbor, Blefuscu, and the cause is explained. It all started because one island likes to break their eggs form the large side while the other does it from the small side. Do eggs even have a smaller side? It is foolish to go to war over such a silly subject and what Swift is doing is mocking the silly reasons and excuses that countries use to go to war with each other and showing that they sound just like this unreasonable cause. As I go on I will try to analyze more of the satire, and I hope by the end of the book I will have found many, many more.

Gulliver Park And Misconceptions

The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear of Gulliver is the children's book that I read when I was about 7 about this character. The next thing is my visit to Gulliver Park in Valencia, Spain, where my family and I spent almost half a day running up and down Gulliver. I also remember that while I had lots of fun scrambling up his lags and sliding down his arms, there was something scary about the fact that there was a giant tied to the floor. On top of that, there was something that scared me a little about the facial expression and the way his body was contorted. Why are these things important? I think that I just felt that having a previous idea of what the story would tell made me start reading with some sort of prejudice towards it. I felt like we were going to dwell on a story made for little kids, which although I found interesting I really didn't understand very well. Now, however, I noticed that this perception I had about the story being made for kids was completely erroneous because there is so much in the book that only people who understand literature could catch, I don't even think I understand half of what is there, that it makes it a book for literates.

Quijote and Gulliver

As I read the introduction and the notes that came before the first actual chapter in Gulliver’s Travels I found that many things were similar to Don Quixote. Although the later is written almost 100 years before the first, I find that many things are similar in these few first pages. The first similarity I found was the fact that there were several preambles to the actual story. The book does not begin at once but it has some letters to the reader and then to the editor before they start. In both of the books these letters are metafiction, because although they are really written by Cervantes and Swift respectively they are supposed to be written by someone else who will be writing the story which is then published by someone else who also gets the chance to speak. The first time the concept is presented it is confusing to understand what is going on because the change in narrators who are really the same person can be confusing. However, as the reader gets used to this I think that the polyphony of the text is very useful in satirical writing as is the case with both works. With this tactic the writer can make comments about the comments he has made in the book and create some sort of debate on topics. By doing this in satire the writer also confuses who is writing and gets to “apologize” to the reader in an ironic way that would really be due to censorship. I really appreciated the effect this had on Don Quixote and I hope the same effect will take place with this book.

Another similarity that I picked up on, and this is not only between the two books but also between other such as Lazarillo de Tormes and some other texts from Garcilaso De la Vega as well as other writers of the time, is that before they start they undermine their writing and the readers skills. The fact that they say that their writing is less than what people would expect and that they apologize beforehand for any mistakes they make shows alleged modesty, but I think what they were trying to do was lower the reader’s expectations so that in the end they will hold the book in even higher regard. They might also be trying to make fun of the reader because they know that the reader knows that they think their texts are very good and this makes the whole thing funny. Swift does the same thing and before starting states that his style is simple and his writing basic, and I believe he does so with the afore mentioned purposes.

The last thing I saw in the first part that they have in common is that “My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best Authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books.” (Swift, pg. 2) It is also mentioned in Gulliver’s Travels that many people did not believe in him but that regardless of that he knew that his travels and experiences were the truth. As Don Quixote, Gulliver is reading a lot and what I thought of as I read this was that there might be the possibility that Swift is making fun of Cervantes with this allusion to his character that spent his time reading books and then came up with crazy ideas, as Gulliver’s ideas might seem. Also we can see that people were doubtful of the validity of Gulliver’s stories such as they were of Don Quixote’s because both are ideas that at the time they were presented would signal that the person was crazy and had no limits between reality and imagination.

Prom: The Perfect Night Or An "Antiquated Mating Ritual?"*

The op-ed piece I chose was not so much a piece as it was an opinion debate made up of several pieces each by different people with various points of view on the subject. It was called Prom Excess, Indignities, and flashbacks. As you can imagine, this debate talks about proms and whether or not they are worth all the trouble. Now, the views on the prom have always been clear. There is the group that sees it as the perfect night, those who see it as cheesy tradition they will still go to, and those who think that it is an “antiquated mating ritual… [where you] get all dressed up, so some Drakkar Noir-wearing dexter with a boner can feel you up while you're forced to listen to a band that, by definition, blows.”* In this article different people such as a teacher, a principal, a comedian, and a columnist expressed their opinions on the infamous senior prom. I won’t list all their views because I think that the different sides are clear and it would be a waste of time to summarize the article as it is available for anyone to read. However I would like to express my opinion n this subject.

Prom. One night that for many people defines the entire high school experience: the popularity contest, the rumor patrol, the dress to impress, etc. It is made up of many parts, the planning of the prom, the quest for the perfect dress, the search for the correct date, the transportation to and from the prom, and finally, the final moment: the perfect night. But in my opinion it is just that, one night. One night that people think is the entity of four years. This is a view I do not share. The prom, for me, is a very cool experience because it is a chance to say goodbye to the people you’ve been with, to the life style you’ve had. However it is most definitely not as big a deal as people say it is. In reality it all goes by in a blur while you look around and feel nostalgic for every little thing. Should it be exterminated though? Many people say that it should be because it is just a chance for teenagers to drink and it encourages promiscuity. These people that advocate the ideas that prom is this big illegal chaos are making too big a deal out of it. It is just a dance where “we’ll dance, we’ll kiss, we’ll come home. Not quite the crisis situation you imagine.”* I think that the prom should go in and happen regardless of the state of the economy or the swine flu “pandemic” because there is no evil that comes from it and the prom is a tradition that however pointless most high school kids look forwards to. Should it be have the importance that it does, though? I think that it shouldn’t. But then again that is my opinion and it really doesn’t harm me that other people think of it as the most important event of their life. I should just shrug it off and let them notice how silly that idea is all on their own.

*10 Things I Hate About You, 1999.

Thank You For Hating Her Book

We’ve heard clichés al our life. That does not mean, however, that we have to believe in everything they say, or do we? No news is good news; there is no thing as bad publicity, etc. The op-ed piece I read in the New York Times, Thank You For Hating My Book by Katha Pollitt, was a comical recap of how a new author got a bad book review-and how this helped her sell more books. She presents the idea that any type of publicity will let the people know that there is a new book out and this solely is a good help for her. What I liked the most about this piece, though, was it’s honesty and how it showed that even authors feel scared that people don’t accept their work. She wrote about how she would buy a book an hour, “I have free shipping and a lot of relatives,” on Amazon to her rating up, and while she did this her daughter kept telling her that what she was doing was cheating and did not count. Do all authors do something similar? Do they write good reviews for their books under a pen name? Do they criticize the competition with bad ones? I did not know. So I looked it up. Good old Google always comes in handy. I found several articles and posts that discussed how they had found that reviews and statistics on Amazon were many times caused or written by the author of the book. I did not find any “credible report” if we scale it with the UN terms, but for me that was enough. My suspicion (which had arisen only after reading this article) had been confirmed. My next step was obvious, I had to go to Amazon and see if I could find anything that looked like a fake review. That was harder than it sounded, with suspicion creeping through me every good review I read I viewed as a threat to the book’s actual “good.” My mind then raced on ahead of me: authors are scared when they publish. Knowing this made my day. I had always felt queasy about letting other people read the things I wrote (the blog is not easy for me, even if no one reads it) and I thought that it was a bubble of insecurity that I had within me. Now that I know that authors who “if you take out Dan Brown, I was practically a best seller,” also have a hard time seeing how others react to what they have written I feel much better. So I guess all I can say is…Thank you for hating her book.

Downtown Girl

This painting, Downtown Girl by Romero Britto has a lot to say from very simple things as are the lines, the color, the texture, the oragnization, and many other principles.

Lines

The lines in this image are very bold and they stand out boldly. They are also very straight and give the picture a broken and geometric feeling.

Size

The woman in the picture looks very big, even if she is closer to the viewer than the sky line. The

big parts of her body also give the feeling that she

is the most important piece in the drawing.

Color

There is a lot of color in this piece and there is great contrast between the different parts of the image. The colors draw attention to technique rather than to what is being painted.

Direction

There are lines all over the painting, but they direct the attention to the womans face because that is where most of the lines are pointing and also where there is the biggest amount of space.

Shape

All the shapes in this painting are very geometric and this makes the piece look a little like Picasso because geometric shapes are used to form an organic one.

Perspective

The viewer seems to be looking at the woman from eye level, but maybe also a little below

because we can see the skyline clearly and the bulidings seem to tower above the girl.

We Could Be Great If Only...

If I had any actual followers of my blog then I’m sure they would want to hit me in no time. I don’t really have anyone that reads the blog constantly and so I am not sacred to go out and try to reach to people who will read this one post for a strange and unknown reason. Yes, I will again pretend I’m a know-it-all and try to fix humanity by writing about what is wrong with it. Only this time I will use help from a Nobel Prize winning author to back up my ideas. Saul bellow states it, not me, so if you want to punch someone it might be a good idea to remember that. “Of course, the hero of the poem is sick humanity. If it would open its eyes it would be great.” And guess what? I completely agree. It’s not hard to see all the major problems we have. We are selfish, egocentric, self important, materialistic, consumerists, unreliable, and incapable of self criticizing for the most part. There is some hope, though, not all is lost. As bellow states very wisely, if humanity woke up it could be a marvel instead of a misery. It might seem to the reader as I was going on in a self hate rant that was directed at the whole planet because of a bad thing that happened to me today or because of my hormones, but I am not. I try to say true things, and up to now I don’t see one argument that I have presented until now that can be challenged. The potential in people is an amazing trait that cannot be seen in anything else in the world that we know, and that is really saying something. I personally believe that if we used all our resources for better purposes and if we tried to improve as a society and not as independent individuals we could get a lot farther. I thought that when bellow put this in his book he was trying to let everyone know that we do have problems, and that fixing them does not take much: it is as simple as opening our eyes. I still try everyday to fix little things and help the effort, and it makes me very happy to see that may people do the same. I always have the hope that one day we will finally get to a pint where we have mastered team work and intelligence so that we can make the most out of our talents and make the world the best place it can be. So I’m done with this cry of help towards whoever wants to hear it. One day, hopefully, I will have no more of these weird messages because there will be no problems, won’t I? It can’t hurt to dream. :)

Lady With A Parasol, Monet

In this painting by Monet there are many different principles of composition that can be analyzed.

Lines
The lines are very smooth and soft, not very defined or marked.

Size
The woman looks the natural size but the umbrella seems a little bigger than usual.

Color
The upper part has a lot of cool colors that contrast with the warm colors that are seen in the bottom. Very realistic.

Direction
The emphasis is on the woman because the lines point towards the center of the painting and the open sky makes us look for something to focus on.

Shape
The shape of the woman is very clear but the grass and the sky mix together and they make it hard to see which is which shape, giving emphasis and clarity to the woman.

Perspective
The picture is being looked at form a point a little below eye level and this makes the woman more dramatic and mystical because she seems to be more than whoever is looking at it.

I think that it is very interesting to look at the different aspects of a picture because they make you understand a lot more than if you simply look at it quickly, and I think that it relates to reading because the same principle of paying attention to get more of it applies.

Good Writing: Subtle Hints?

In A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert there is a lot of description done through ornamental language and through small hints that actually reveal a lot about a certain character. I thought that it was amazing to see how he did this in a very subtle way and how at the end of the story we had a perfect image and characterization of each of the protagonists without ever sitting the reader down and listing characteristics specific to one person. A great example of this is the following passage: “Elle s'agita pour les souliers pour le chapelet, pour le livre, pour les gants.” Here Flaubert is putting a description of Felicite in the middle of an anecdote which gives us an idea of her personality and disposition (she worries a lot and about very unimportant things) without making it clear. At the end of the book I felt like I really knew that character, and the feeling of surprise that I felt as a reaction to this feeling was one that I would love to create in my readers. I think that a lot of this happens with the parrot, too. We are never told that she is a sad and miserable person, but that is very much the feeling I got when I noticed that the most important thing to her is a parrot, and it is the last thing she recalls and thinks about before she is about to die. This also presents us with the opportunity to understand just how lonely she really is and how important “silly” things are to her, and maybe even to all the lonely people out there. Although Flaubert is a very ornamented writer and his text can not be described as minimalistic, I felt that in this respect on making the reader catch on to complex things by adding simple touches made him a type of minimalist. However, as I wrote this I started to think that all writers include hints as such in their writing and that maybe the fact that you can make the reader realize things that maybe would have been ignored by others is the essence of being a good writer. Is there really one trait that is key to being a great author or is it many different aspects of writing combined? I have come to think that it is many many items combined, and I am still surprised that as we go on through the year I see things that I thought were meaningless actually have a very big importance and effect on the whole piece.

Family In Literature

In this text I find that there is a topic that is always present in our lives, but we don’t always manage to express it well or to talk about it. Many times I feel this topic is left behind because we try to not see it as a big thing or because we think if we touch it everything will turn into a soap opera. This topic is family. Family is always there in our minds, even when we don’t think about it the influences from these people are there behind every little thing we do. Even if it is not the biological family, the people that were around us for the first years of our lives always had an effect on us, and as Freud says, our personality is the internalization of these very people. In A Simple Soul Felicite has a personality that I think reflects many things from her childhood, and the hard times she had to get through. There is also the presence of her sister who is really using her to get ahead and to provide for her son instead of due to the fact that she really wants to reestablish the contact between the two of them . This not only showed how people can be really selfish but it was further evidence that family conflict is very usual and that although many people try to ignore it, it is important to see that it does influence people and how they behave.

Cynicism In Todays Society

The mention of cynicism in a novel or a text almost always makes me stop and think. (I have noticed that now I commonly stop and think while reading books.) I feel that literature is usually a way to express a dislike of something or a criticism of the way people live. This is probably why when cynicism is mentioned I feel like there is a direct reference to the same work: metafiction. “…cynical? So many people nowadays were. No one seemed satisfied, and Wilhelm was specially horrified by the cynicism of successful people. Cynicism was bread and meat to everyone. And irony, too. Maybe it couldn’t be helped. It was probably even necessary.” (Bellow, pg. 13) I felt connected to what Wilhelm was saying in this passage: I also feel that today no one is happy with what they have. I identify with this myself, I don’t feel like I’m doing the best I could for many aspects of life, and this makes me be very cynical towards other people. So when Wilhelm talks about cynicism I felt like he was talking to me directly, and not to the innumerable amount of readers that he might have throughout all of life. It was very interesting to see the effect that this had on me, because as I read this [art of the book I kept on thinking back to it and for the rest of the time I was paying lots more attention to what was being said and trying to apply it to my everyday life.

Another topic that I related to the topic of cynicism was the part where he talks about money, and the effect that it has on people. It is sadly all true, too. You are seen differently in the world depending on how much money you have, and the system of classes that has been developed, invisibly, around the globe controls how everyone views everybody else. If someone with money and someone poor came and presented the same argument in a meeting you would probably slide towards the person with money, even if the ideas were the same. Is this because of the security that money brings along or is it because the audience would feel more comfortable around a person with money? It really doesn’t matter, what matters is that the issue is too big to be ignored. In the movie The Pursuit of Happiness I saw this variable expressed very well. The man goes form having some money to having none, but he gets back on his feet after all. How does he do this, however? He does it by pretending he has money all throughout, as it is the only way he will be taken seriously. What makes a snobby upper class teenager more valuable to the world than his poor and lowest class counter part? Nothing. Nothing at all. Society has always thought that there is something there, and this is the sad part of the deal. In the world we live in money, many times, means more than values.

Is Love Unconditional?

I have had a short life. I have had few experiences that can help me sort out the question I have in my mind right now, so I have taken the risk of going on a small rant that will hopefully clear things up for me. It might be very strange, but that is the way I take murky water and make it go back to its original transparent self. The question that clouds my mind right now is the following: is the statement “A man is only as good as what he loves,”* true? I would tend to argue that it is not true. This is because love is supposed to be unconditional, or at least so is what I’ve heard. If love is unconditional then it would be based on the fact that anyone can fall in love with anything at all, better or worse than himself. However, can we really-can anyone- judge other people and things to determine whether they are better or worse than something else? Is there a better and a worse? If there is then it could be argued that regardless of the fact that love “doesn’t discriminate” loving a certain thing just proofs that you are as good as that same thing or person because you find in them what you like, and you are what you like. Thus, this statement could be dismissed as true. If there is no better and worse, or if there is but we don’t have the power to determine which is which, then it would be impossible to show that a man is or is not as good as what he loves. Why does it matter, anyway? I don’t know why this passage struck me as something interesting, but as I read it I just felt like it deserved more consideration than any other normal sentence and so I decided to dissect it ant try to see if it was veridical or not. I still have no answer, but at least I have two clear choices now. Maybe one day when I have more than hypothetical assumptions to back my arguments up I will be able to state a clear answer to this, and figure out why this sentence seemed more important to me than others.

*Bellow, pg. 7.