By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions.” (Pg. 127-128), Postman is showing that by only appealing to our base emotions, we aren’t required to think as much as when presented with fact. Because our culture has accepted this new attitude, Neil believes that our society has become worse. He uses the hyperbole as a sort of attention getter; to make a reader ask himself if the title can actually come true. Logos is used throughout the book and is mainly found in Postman’s quotes and examples.
“I am! Yet what I am none cares or know, My friends forsake me like a memory lost…” Compare the ways in which isolation or alienation from society are presented in any two of the texts you have studied. We witness cases of alienation in the texts The Scarlet Letter and A Streetcar Named Desire, which are presented mainly in the female protagonists Hester Prynne and Blanche DuBois. However, although both characters experience isolation from their respective societies, it is my contention that the causes for their isolation are different. While Hester’s isolation is largely societal, Blanche experiences two different kinds of isolation.
Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a story about a young girl named Connie who starts out being superficial and selfish and ends up in a horrifying situation she must accept unless she wants her family to be in the same horrifying situation. It is a terrible decision for a teenage girl to make, but she does, and she leaves with the mysterious Arnold Friend. There are many different explanations and theories as to why she left with Arnold, what happened when he was at her house, and who Arnold Friend truly was. Joyce Carol Oates left “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” with countless ideas about countless parts of the story. There are very heavy biblical theories about the nature of this story, and many thoughts on Connie’s teenage promiscuity and her assumed rape at the end of the story.
The audience is challenged throughout the text, as the reader’s assertiveness and insight into Sallies character is provoked through literary techniques, such as simile, symbolism etc. The biography is also a mix of detective novel, so the reader discovers what happened to Sallie and what she stood up against. Her pain and suffering from abandonment is explored and described by Sallie Anne as well as her sister in the following insightful narration. “when pat (sallies mother) abandoned Sallie for the second time, that really fucked her up… when your mother makes a habit of walking out on you, it doesn’t do much for your self esteem” and Sally stated “if only I’d had my mother, things would Have been different”. These lines emphasize the dramatic impact the repeated abandonment had on Sallie, and the course her life took.
They are the ones who find it necessary to relocate and who ultimately lose a sense of community because of their decision to isolate themselves in order to maintain this economic power. Like Heathcliff, Esperanza will only be able to subvert her subordinate position when she moves away from Mango Street and uses her writing as a means to earn a living. Subsequently, Esperanza will one day return to Mango Street and give back to her community, whether it will be monetarily or just allowing bums to sleep in her attic. In Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Linda Brent is constantly resisting and challenging the dominant hegemony of slavery as represented in slave owner, Dr. Flint. Regardless of her position as a female slave, Linda is able to destabilize the dominance of the slave masters by empowering herself with the ability to read and write.
By taking on a psychoanalytic scope of her autobiography, a reader can explore the author’s past to delve deeper into the meaning of her harsh language and her opposing tone towards the world. To reinforce her strife she includes, “I have heard Indians joke about those who act as if they have no relatives.” (97) Feeling ostracized from both her European and Hopi relatives, she projects dissent against the assertion and claims that she has "no relatives.” (97) Additionally, she also emphasizes that they "threw [her] away." (97) Therefore, Rose also employs an idea of herself as inhuman; she mentions that her family “threw [her] away”, connoting that they simply disposed of her as worthless. Rose repeatedly states that her family ignored her and further intensifies her unpromising feelings of isolation from society as she reiterates, "When my family threw me away” (97) and includes, “every human on earth did likewise.” (97) If one were to observe Rose’s identity issues from a psychoanalytic perspective, considering that “as a child... [She] knew she didn’t belong among people” (97) and was “emotionally crippled” (97), her bitter tone stems from her empty stance in the world as a
Ford Pinto Case In the 1970s, Ford Motor Company wanted to be ahead of the competition in the small car market therefore they were willing to compromise their safety standards for profit. They knew that the low standards would result in the deadly fires but thought that it would be too costly to stop production to redesign the car. They also believed that Safety did not sell cars. The part that would need to be installed in the Ford Pinto would have cost Ford $11 per car. Ford Motor Company was knowingly making cheap Pinto cars that exploded upon rear end collisions.
He is disgusted by human physicality, which leaves him isolated and lonely towards adults and leads him to sexual impulses with little girls (Spring). The narrator ironically describes his as “a very clean man” instead of a dirty old man, but his implications are clear: his obsession with bodily purity has made him more perverted than simple lust life (Spring). Soaphead Church can be labeled as a ‘people hater’ who prefers objects to people. While, writing his letter to God we find him even crazier then before. Morrison not only wants us to see how Soaphead is a bad person but he wants us to see another way to deal with racial self-hatred (Spring).
Sakura Kato English 10 C Date: 1/ 2/ 2013 A Streetcar Named Desire Motif: Light Through the use of a light motif, Williams demonstrates how Blanche’s aversion to light conveys the theme of illusion and reality. Light is a symbol of reality and as Blanche runs away from it, she stays in the darkness to hide not only her true self and but from reality. Blanche describes her first love as “a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow” [pg. 114] and therefore, light is used to represent love, but her first husband’s suicide, has erased love and light from her life. So metaphorically, she is hiding from reality but on a physical level, Blanche avoids light to prevent others from seeing the reality of her beauty that is now being “put out” like light.
Analyze the way in which the writer of one text you have studied presents the individual’s dislocation or insecurity in modern society. In the universe of A Streetcar Named Desire (ASCND), Blanche Dubois, our complicated protagonist, is presented as the individual who is displaced in the modern society. Blanche is seen to portray herself as a Southern Belle. This shows her desperate attempt and need to construct an identity for her own self which in the end brings out her insecurities. She would rather conceal her insecurities and put on a facade so as to live up to her desire to be a Southern Belle.