Analysis#7

Analysis #7

Human as an object!

Said presents the idea by analyzing the relationships between East and West during the nineteenth and twentieth century by giving the example of the way European dominates Easterners.   According to Edward W. Said’s Orientalism noted that, “made Oriental.  There is very little consent to be found, for example, in the fact that Flaubert’s encounter with an Egyptian courtesan produced a widely influential model of the Oriental woman; she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotion, presence, or history.  He spoke for and represented her” (1870).   Asian or Middle Eastern was very common in the 19th Century in Europe and was a driving force behind many works of European art. 

J.A.D. Ingres, Grande Odalisque.  A woman in the picture is showing her ideal body.  She has a well- proportioned body.  At that time, people thought a woman body should be like the women in the picture.

Jean-Leon Gerome, Slave Market.  European superiority – since Europeans had banned slavery before the USA.  A woman slave is sold as an object in the market.  She needs to show her body in front of male gaze.

What happens when women become an object?  A woman is commodity.  A nude woman displays for the consuming men European.  Those two pictures as I show are Academic style.  The pictures look real, but idealize at nineteen century.  The women are an exotic “Oriental” object display for the consuming male gaze which is idealizes body part to feed superior.  The gaze confers power according to gender.  The presumed viewer is a heterosexual.  At that time, a big issue came to rise; it was over how women are portrayed in the society.  Many people seem to think that women are negatively portrayed in the society, and that leads towards negative effects on how women are treated. 

Work cite
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

Analysis#6

Analysis #6

Fix and firm

          Feminism is the belief in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.  They have been held back and their opportunities taken away from them because of the fact that they were women.  Theory portrays women’s liberation through episodes that illustrate the historical record of male domination.   Viewers are asked to consider the aggressive nature of looking, especially the aggressive nature of male gaze and its relation to violence against women.  According to Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight noted that,

“With the advent of movie and television, the rules for femininity have come to be culturally transmitted more and more through standardized visual images.  As a result, femininity itself has come to be largely a matter of constructing, in the manner described by Erving Goffman, the appropriate surface presentation of the self.  We are no longer given verbal descriptions or exemplars of what a lady is or of what femininity consists.  Rather, we learn the rules directly through bodily discourse: Through images that tell us what clothes, body shape, facial expression, movements, and behavior are required.” (2244)

These pervasive ads influence kids to demand poor food choice, to think drinking is cool, and sex is a recreational activity and that anorexia is fashionable. 

          Sky vodka ad relates to sex

Male dominates fancy high job and female is getting tan at home as social history. 

  

At the same time, the advertiser cannot say in word that being skinnier will make you sexier, but the image deliberately links “Virginia Slims” and women’s body in a visual appeal to unconscious desire.  At that time, this advertisement made women believed that smoking a cigarette would make them skinnier, and make them healthy and powerful.  Although the society has changed, women are still dominated by men.  They are still an object, and men have history as subject.  They are still submitted to men, and they call for male’s attention.

Work cite
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

Group presentation

Presentation Postmodernism and Post structuralism

          Our group has seven people, but only six people give six parts of presentation because Alex Doronin is a special person who begins a discussion, introduces each new section, and closed the presentation.  My presentation was on Modernism, and my part was Lyotard.  I searched information about Lyotard’s modernism theory on several websites and some pictures.  After that, I made power point and send it to Michaela who collected our PowerPoint and put in the same file. Actually, our group had to present on April 26, but we had short time, so we will continue to present our project next week. 

 I was the first person who gave a presentation.  I really did not like to speak in front of people, so giving presentation was the hardest part for me. On the teddy bear picture give me a sense of signifier and signify.  Food produces have shape of animal, but they are not animal.  I could not speak English very well, and my pronunciation was very bad.  I was not confident.  I think I am a lucky person because members in my group are so kind and friendly.  After I finished giving a presentation, I felt so sorry for my group because I was too nervous.  However, people in my group were not angry at me, but also gave me courage. 

Analysis#5

Analysis #5

Top to Bottom

Post modernism is an artistic and literary movement that quite obviously rejected the previous modernism movement in an attempt to analyse and reorganize the existing modes of art practice.  Post modern caused a great change among popular style and challenged the term modernism.  The French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard focused on the statement “The post-, in the term ‘postmodernist’ is in this case to be understood in the sense of a simple succession, of a diachrony of periods, each of them clearly identifiable.  Something like a conversion, a new direction after the previous one” (1466).  People escaped the complexity to simpleness.  In other word, they got bored of modernism and changed their idea to Postmodernisn.  Many art theories are influenced be postmodernism such as minimalist, surrealism, and expressionism. 

            Frank Stella, Untitled.  What do you see in this picture?

On Frank Stella’s minimalist painting is about line shape textual, and color.  The painting does not tell a story, or even feeling.  The painting is based on fact that only what can be seen.  There is there.  It is really an object.  "What you see is what you get."

                        Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  What is that?

This piece of art was designed as a minimal sculpture sit below ground and covered with the names of men and women who died during the war.  It has been very controversial.  This is an emotional piece, but she did not express her mood.  It is contemporary public art work, and it is an abstract geometric form of a single natural material.

            Both pieces of art generated a good deal of controversy and discussion about its ideological and artistic merit.  Moreover, both artists skillful combination of found and created objects make their emotion assemblage visual summation of the deeply embedded social ills that were redressed during the time period.   


Work cite
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

reflection#10

Reflection #10

The Mental Labor Problem

Artists are people who are the most difficult to understand their mind, and their works are also hard to understand.  General people often cannot think in the same way as artists can.  The artists have an extensive imagination that people cannot approach.  Thus, artists are a small group of people in the society.  They use their brain and imagination in their career to unseal the world with their ability on their way in art.  I would like to include literature.  The readers cannot assume the writer’s work by reading only one time and without reading introduction because people have had different experiences.  They will base on their first feeling, when they read a story.  The artists do not get big money as a business man does because in the past, people did not have a company to support them.  On the other hand, the company allots work into department.  Artists are helped by marketing.  They only have to create a wonderful job.  My friend is the one who as artistic feeling.  She can see everything around her has a meaningful.  When I went to restaurant to have dinner with her, the waiter served us a big piece of steak on a hot tray.  She said that, “Look at smoke.  It is wonderful.  Smoke is floating in the air; give me a feeling of emptiness.  The smoke can go every way.  It is free”.  I could not get into her feeling many times, and it is so hard to understand her.  On the other hand, this kind of people more understands the world than general people. 

Analysis#4

Analysis #4

Waiting for Lefty: Waiting for hope

          How do people assess a human’s worth? Do they measure human value on the base of intelligence, richness, beauty, an authority figure, or power?  In Clifford Odet’s time, social class is economic arrangements of groups in society.  People are separated into two classes which are capitalist and working class.  Waiting for Lefty is about cab drivers who want to strike for better lives.  The major solution to the problem is unionization which is where the workers in specific traders would bond together and receive, among other benefits, standardized wages, and greater job security.  The writer deals with American tragedy which is rooted in American history and social movements.  He focuses on social class, especially on working class.  He elaborately explains the differences between capitalist who run the company on worker’s suffering, and working class people who endure pain to work for their duty and survival. 

          The writer imitates a real world situation to a small community of the cab driver.  Throughout Waiting for Lefty, Odet shows effects of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel in The communist Manifesto.  It is noted that, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.  Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild- master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (P.657).  Unions are the only way for cab drivers to balance the power against big companies.  Besides unions, the big companies can continually drive down wage and create bitter competition among its employee.  The capitalists take advantage of their own people.  Edna, a character from the story, said “Your boss is marking sucker outta you boys every minute.  Yes, and suckers out of all the wives and the poor innocent kids who’ll grow up with crooked spines and sick bones” (P2096).  The working class people must sell their power in order to survive and the ruling class is dependent on them for production.  The cab drivers earn their livelihood be selling their power. 

          The main idea of the writer is society’s inequality between capitalist and working class.  The gap between two classes would just keep bigger and bigger.  The capitalist would be running the country, so they just keep “getting richer and richer while the working class people keep getting poorer.”  The lower class people have no way of getting richer because they are working for the rich capitalists.  The capitalists would rise or low their worker’s salary, and if they run the nation, they would make sure that the working class people got as little salary as possible.  Thus, the working class people would have to rebel against the capitalists in order to get their way or at least to be heard and to try to get more payment. 

Works cited

Lauter, Paul, and Richard Yarborough. The Heath Anthology of American Literature: concise Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Print.

Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

Analysis#3

Analysis #3

Cultures and Experiences are Different.

How do people know a really feeling of an author without reading an introduction or biography?  Readers cannot really get into the writer’s feeling or attitude of his or her writing.  When the readers read a novel, the readers will escape from the real world and will be entertained by a story that the writer brings it from a part of their reality.  I sometimes see a word “From true story” written in front cover of the book.  I wondered that a story was really true.  A reason that made I chose Literature major because I love to read Thai novel for entertaining myself.  I think I could enjoy my major, but I was wrong.  I could not only read a novel for entertaining, but I also needed to know such as subject matter and work of history.  I have few basic knowledge of literature because I graduated from high school in Thailand, and my school’s teaching system and American’s teaching system are totally different, but I had an opportunity to take general education at College.  The problem I met when I read a novel is differences between  my culture and a writer culture, and I have less experience in the wide world.

First of all, culture difference is the main problem.  Before I took an English class, I like reading a novel the most.  I feel like I was in the fancy world, escaped a problem for a while, and stayed with my imagination, but that was a kind of reading for joy.  After I started taking English class, my thought was changed.  A novel is more than a joy, but there is a story hide behind the story such as knowledge, a feeling, and culture, and I also can travel a place by place by reading thru a novel.  At the same time, when I deeply read a novel, I learned a theme, symbol, and meaning in a novel.  I barely understood the meaning of them.  For example, Thai people believe that orange means development or gold, but American people believe orange means Energy, balance, and enthusiasm.  Thai writer’s target is also different from American writer.  Thai writers head for the audients; they write what the readers want to read.  Although the story talks about history, the writer must include hero and heroine, and the most important thing is at the end of the story ends with happy ending.  On the other hand, American writers write on their own target or their own need.  The reader can stand with the hero death, but Thai people cannot.  The reader will ban the writer.

 Second, I have less experience in the wide world.  I cannot really understand what the writers try to tell me.  For example, when I was fourteen years old, I addicted reading a drama.  At that time, I did not understand why the writer set all characters met many problems in the same time.  Did that situation really happen to the people?  Only one cue I thought was the writer made it up.  Regarding to Wolfgang Iser’s Interaction between Text and reader noted that, “An obvious and major difference between reading and all forms of social interaction is the fact that with reading there is no face to face situation.  A text cannot adapt itself to each reader it comes into contact with.  The part near dyadic interaction can ask each other question in order to ascertain how far their images have bridged the gap of the inexperiencebility of one another experience. (1527)” When I was nineteen years old, I had an opportunity to study in the USA.  I brought that book with me, but I just opened to read it three years later after I spent my life alone in the USA.  The first time I reread a book, I though the story was really true.  It was a life and reality.

People come from a different place and a different society may have a different experience.  Although people are in the same society, they may not have the same situation.  People read a text to enlarge their knowledge to the situation that they never meet.  I believe that nothing is impossible to happen in the world, but it is depended on myself that I will overlook or I cannot get into.
Work cite
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

reflection#9

Reflection #9

Marxist: Capitalist and worker

What make people in the society different?  I think the thing that makes people different is money which is the most important variable.  The society is inequality between the capitalists and working class.  Social classes are economic arrangement of groups in society.  Marx and Engels noted that, “On the ‘material conditions of life’ and the economic structure of society,’ Marx and Engels are sharp and compelling; on the subject of the creative and critical consciousness of persons and cultures, they falter” (650).  People are separate into two classes which are capitalists and working class.  They are placed in one of these class based on their wealth.  The gap between the capitalists and working class would just keep getting bigger and bigger.  The capitalists would be running the country, so they just getting richer and richer while the working class people keep getting poorer.  The working class people have no opportunity of getting richer because they all work for the rich capitalists.  Work is scary, wage is low, and the worker is resented, resisted, and repressed by the capitalists.  Marxist represents ideology of class society.  People each class relates to each other by reproduction.  Labor is the source of value.  The working class people must sell their labor in order to survive with exchanging of money.  Moreover, the capitalists are dependent on working class for production.  For the capitalists, it they are wealthy, they will more than likely have more power, and if you are very wealthy, you will have even more power. 

reflection#8

Reflection #8

“Why write”

I always wonder why we write.  I am not a person who good in writing, so I usually think about a person who can write a foot thick of book. How long they are taking to write?  What they are writing about?  Should I say they write about themselves or the situation they meet? 

First of all, how do we know about history?  People wanted to keep an important situations or places by writing and sent a message to the next generation.  People in the present world learn history via the letter from the people who were closed to the king or the people who were in the situations, and they recorded all the situations to be collateral evidence.  I am taking Middle age Literature which most of exquisite poems talk about long history of a king or a country.  At the same time, novelists write a story to entertain readers or announce satiric story or situation thru all the representative characters in their works of art.  I think all the situations in a novel, a play, and a drama makes from real life, but it is depend on which part of people life and which society they are.  On the other hand, the story can be made from an author’s imagination, but slightly based on real world.  According to Jean-Paul Sartre’s why write noted that, “But if ourselves produce the rules of production, the measures, the criteria, and if our creative drive comes from the very depths of our heart, then we never find anything but ourselves in our work” (P. 1200).  I always some readers slip off words “That’s possible”.  I think nothing can be impossible.  Everything can happen to other, but it may not happen to us.

Analysis#2

The Mulberry tree by Vincent Van Gogh : Formalism and Structuralism Painting

It is painted on canvas with an oil color. This painting was so important to van Gogh that he wrote about it three times in letters to his brother and sister, commenting that he believed it was the best of his mulberry tree paintings.  I have ever seen this art of work at Norton Simon Museum.  This painting caught my eyes becasue it attracted me very much.  The tree stands alond at the middle of a field with coil and curl relieves.  It gave me a feeling of chaos in the midst of confusion because the color of the painting was melancholy.  When I stepped back and shallow watched the picture, I felt relaxed, and I felt like I was watching the tree in the field.  However, when I saw the picture closely, I frowned, and it made me feel dazzled.

Van Gogh’s painting is formalism and structuralism because he used the principles of Impressionism and loosened up his brushwork Vincent's best of this series showed his expressive style and bold color choices, which were always imaginative but equally inspired.  The elements included color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content.  This painting is at once more somber and spiritual in mood.  Elements in the picture were so harmonious very well.  There were several differences of relieves.  A relief on the tree was coil and curl.  He wanted to express his feeling.  At the same time, he may also used of structuralism because the artist used his pieces of art to communicate, to fight against, or to express their feeling thru the hidden meaning in the picture itself.  The picture’s meaning may effect to political in his society at that time.  I think he tried to tell the audient that he was violently upset in mind, but he had to be in the world of tremendous changes.   

Marcel Duchamp's fountain; Ready made : porcelain urinal
 Is it fountain?

I found the good example of Structuralism which is Marcel Duchamp’s fountain.  He used of object to inform the idea behind the art.  I think Structuralism is more difficult to understand than Formalism.  A sculpture which is a man toilet and a name which is a stream of water that is forced up to the air do not associate with each other. 

reflection#7

Reflection #7

The Interpretation of dreams:  The Oedipus Complex

According to Sigmund Freud’s the Oedipus complex noted that “If Oedipus Rex moves a modern audience no less than it did the contemporary Greek one, the explanation can only be that its effect does not lie in the contrast between destiny and human will, but is to be looked for in the particular nature of the material on which that contrast is exemplified” (816).  Oedipus Hamlet, who is the son, wants to kill his own father to get his own.  The relationship between a son and a mother is deeply connected by blood lineage.  They both deeply tie of feeling since the mother knows that she has a baby.  I have had an experience when I was young.  I did not like the feeling when my father or my brother hugged my mother at all.  I thought my mother was only mine.  When I was offended by my father, I would cry.  I think it is about truly deeply feeling relationship between a mother and a child.  The child does not follow a custom because he or she cannot decide the situation and lack of experience.  The child wants to be the only one of his or her mother.  The idea of Freud is in the lines with the signification of the Phallus by Lacan.  The child wants to be the phallus for the mother.  In my opinion, I try not to be impolite, but a human has only one phallus.  Thus, the child wants to be only one or number one for the mother. 

Reflection#6

What is the meaning of a sign?

I drove a car on a main road at night in Thailand.  I saw a car at the corner was going to U turn.   Then I gave a winking sign because I would not stop for him.  He stopped for me.  On the other hand, when I got an opportunity to learn a new world, I drove a car on a main road at night in the USA two years later.  In the same situation, the car at a winding course fast made a U turn.  I stepped on a break without delay.  I learned that people in different country have a different understanding of sign.  The meaning of the sign depends on the period of time and part of the world, but it is in the same category.  In my understanding, sign is something in common that gives the meaning to people in the society have the same sense of understanding.  According to Bakhtin’s theory that language is never unity, sign is similar to the language.  It is flexible and depended on people’s idea in that society.  Some signs have the history background to be told by generation to generation such as religion sign.  Moreover, sign can be created by a small group of people to use in a specific point of view.  I have ever joined in the world scout.  Before I went there, I learn a sign of roaming about a forest.  I think if I had not participated in this camp, I would have had this kind of knowledge.   

Reflection#5

“Language is never unitary”

Imagine ten people stand in the line and whisper continually.  First person starts to whisper to the second person behind, the second person whisper the third, the third continually whisper, and go on to the last person in the line.  A sentence which the last person in the line speaks out loud always changes a form of sentence and meaning.  People in the same country and culture, but they have a different experience.  They can define the meaning of the sentence differently.  Every language changes all the time.  People in a new generation will continuously create a new vocabulary.  I try to compare adult’s conversation to teenager’s conversation.  Adults‘conversation is longer sentence but more meaningful than the teenagers is.  The teenagers will speak short but not thoroughly understand.  In the individual group of people will set up a new kind of words or slang, knowing between people in the group and enlarge to general society, and become common words.  Moreover, the feeling of the speaker has impact to the conversation.  A speaker speaks the same sentence but shows the different mood.  The meaning of the sentence can be changed.  Thus, I agree to Bakhtin’s theory that language is never unity.  I am the one who is not English native speaker.  I really cannot show my feeling very well when I speak English, but I really know what I want to say.  My face sometimes looks angry, but I do not mean that.  I cannot naturally show exact feeling because I do not really get into the language.

reflection#4

Sublimity

What does sublimity really mean to me?  I think it depends on an individual line of thought.  People who have different experience may have different feeling.   According to the class’s presentation, I felt every clip that our classmates brought up to the presentation was sublime.  While I was watching them, they made my hair stand on end.  Lord of the Ring was the most impressible clip for me because an arm of national defense was encouraged by his superior.  He did not talk much, but his tone, his action, his speech, and his innate feeling looked very powerful.  I have used almost the same kind of army clip, but on my clip, the leader was giving the speech about proclaiming peach.  I felt they were unity.  The superior fought with his people.  He did not overlook or abandon his army.  The superior and the soldiers collaborated to fight for their peace.  Also, the clips will be sublime or not is up on an audient’s experience and an attitude which I mean what he or she does like or does not like.  Moreover, does an audient get into or understand the point of view of the part of the story?  If an audient does not know what presenters are trying to tell, he or she may not feel about sublimity in that part. 

In my opinion, personal innate feeling and emotion are the most essential elements.  The situations that concern about human’s feeling are very sensitive.  In one clip ten people may have ten points of view.

Analysis#1

 

The King Naresuan

On the YouTube, it is a movie based on Thai History, directed a film by Mom Chao Chatree Yu Kon.  This movie splits in four sections, but I would bring the second section which name is “To Proclaim Peach”.  The year 1674, Princes Maha Hrnrnamrnrcha was promoted as the king of Ayutthaya, then inherit to Mahin who pleased make it succeed to the throne reign of King Naresuan to govern the city of Phitsanulok.  In Myanmar, after the rain God died, relationship between Thailand and Myanmar became shaking.  Moreover, King Naresuan was surprisingly ambushed.  Thus, he took this opportunity to proclaim peach to and broke off diplomatic with Myanmar.

In this scene, he is proclaiming in front of troops by giving speech that Thai people should be in peach to his people and people from the other side who want to join him.  The king used Gorgias’s epideictic or praise rhetoric speech attempt to defend the enemy.  He also used a literary tradition of blame on the enemy that “the king of Hongsawadee does not stand with honesty, friendship, kingsmanship, or tradition.  He acts dishonesty attempting to bring danger up on us.  From now onwards, the kingdoms of Ayutthaya and Hongsawadee will be separated until the end of time.”  When the enemy which has been superior becomes weak, a country which has been a prisoner becomes mature.  To the point of Gorgias, the stronger is not hindered by the weak, but the weak must be ruled by the stronger.  Moreover, the stronger must lead the weaker to follow (39).  I think he tries to persuade his people to trust on him that he is going to bring freedom to them.  It seems to me that he is inviting his people to fight with him, and die with him.  According to Aristotle’s From on Rhetoric noted that “(There is persuasion) through character whenever the speech is spoken in such a way as to make the speaker worthy of credence; for we believe fair-minded people to a greater extent and more quickly (than we do other), on all subjects in general and completely so in cases there is not exact from a previous opinion that the speaker is a certain kind of person; (115).  His own characteristic its self makes people trust because his tone, his personality, and his reputation of war. 

In the scene presents the power of persuasion.  This situation has impact on the future, and it is in the line with Aristotle’s Logos of deliberative.  He proclaims peach at this moment, he can or cannot overcome the enemy.  He or she may die in the war, die a martyr, but he or she trusts and believe in him.  Moreover, the idea of sublime is important on this scene.  At one point the country had been captured, and people had no freedom.  One day, their king proclaims to get back to his own country, to be free.  This freedom and peach must exchange with many people’s lives.

                             +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Works cited

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
W.W. Norton & Company; Second Edition. New York, 2001. Print.

Reflenction#3

Aristotle

Aristotle’s literary theory, which people in the past until now can use, is about giving public speech.  His theory can be adapted to people in the real world, and it is very general that people can follow.  His speech separates in to three parts which are Forensic; concerns with the past, Deliberative; concerns with the future, and Epideictic; concerns with the present.  I can see many movie and play use this theory to talk about flashback and flash forward, especially on speech scene.  On the other hand, Plato’s main point is about perfect good.  He wrote anything he wants to write down in his opinion.  He used of understanding of form and reason, but he was missing of fact in human life.  Aristotle’s theory deals with people feeling, so the writers should do what is made people happy and straight forward thing to make them happy, and break their way.  His poetry is separated into comedy, tragedy, and Epic.  Before I took this class, I had no idea about literary poetry.  It is very complex and hard to understand.  Only one scene in the story is meaningful.  All elements in the scene have the meaning.  The professor and all students discussed in the class about meaning of a law court scene.  I admitted my fault that I could not tell what the meaning was, but when classmates started to discuss, I started understanding.  This theory is complicate.  In addition, what sublimity is, it is depended on how people look and experiences people met. 

Reflection#2

Plato

Plato’s theory is optimistic idea.  He tried to develop the reader’s character to his idea of good.  He used dialogue between two people to communicate to the reader.   Moreover, In The Allegory of the cave, the audients who were in the cave were tough and told about the story of goodness the same thing by the shadow.  It seems like the reader is a part of the group, but just sits and listens.  It is a good idea to teach the reader thru the reading because the middle class and servant can learn the way of life.  However, Plato should include some negative parts in the reading because the reader can think over between bad and good.  The audients never go outside of the cave or read out of the book, so they do not have the new idea of life and the true story of the world.

Gorgias’s the power of speech

The Greek poetry in particular influenced recent attitude.  Classical antiquity is perhaps the most important sauce of the western tradition.  Greek poetry transmitted society’s value on major functions of giving pleasure, preserving memory of great deeds, and providing source of ethical wisdom.  Speechmaker can drag in all sort of irrelevant matters to persuade the audient.  The speech is powerful.  For example, Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen, Helen has to leave her husband because she loses to the speech.

Reflection#1

A Doll’s House = A Doll on a Music Box

When I first saw the clip “Doll on a Music Box”, I was thinking about a play named A Doll’s house by Henrik Ibsen.  Nora can be seen in every scenes of the play.  Nora’s husband controls Nora as a child, and her main duty is housewife and taking care of her children.  Both a Doll on a music box and Nora have many things similar.  They are a feminist that men’s power is over women’s role.  They cannot start to talk about their own feeling.  I saw almost every woman in the crib afraid of showing her mood, especially a queen.  She quietly sits next to a king and keeps herself silence.  However, it seems like a man has more freedom to do anything in the society than a woman does.  All men in the scene are able to reveal their emotion.  Women are limited a territory in a social.  For example, a Doll on a music box is limited on the quadrilateral box.  She cannot walk, talk, and think.  Similarly, Nora is limited in a house.  She is not also allowed to go, and think out of her house.  Both of them must be lost themselves because of people around them.  When a doll looks in a mirror, she does not know herself.  At the same time, besides housework, Nora knows nothing in the world because of man’s dominance.  In the present, I think men and women are still unequal in some countries in the world, especially Asia region.

Welcome to I AM

The same book, the same article, the same story, and the same page are read by different people from different country and culture may feel a story in different way.  Experiences that people met have impact on their thought.  I have experience directly while I am studying in the United States.  I admit that I sometimes read foreign of another nationality novel I barely understand all the characters, symbol, and character's performance in the story.  Culture differences and English language are my main obstacle.  Someone may wonder now who I am.  I am the one who always sit at the middle of the classroom; black hair, and yellow skin.  My name is jannipa Kangwall.  Everybody can call me Ying or Jan.  I came from Thailand, not Taiwan.  My face may look like Chinese because my mother is Chinese and my father is Thai.  Nobody sees me talk.  I am not arrogant, and am also not mute, but I am not a talkative person, and I like to sit and listen.  If someone wants to talk or express your feelings, you can come to see me.  I may not give you a good advice, but I am a good listener.  I want to be friend with everybody.  I love comedy, reading comic book, and playing a game.  I think our life is so short.  We never know what is going to happen tomorrow, so what make us happy we should do it.  I sometime spent my life absurdly because I want to be happy, but sometime I think I had fun too much.

T^T

I am undergraduate student in English-literature major.  I am taking this class because I want to be English professor in Thailand, but English is so difficult for me.  I will try to do as my best.  I totally do not understand about this subject; Major Critical Theories because I have no background about theories in writing; however, I heard some theories in the class from the past.  Many people told me that "I am not good in speaking. I must not be good in writing".  I tried to prove this accusation, but it might be true because I could not write a long paragraph. I am stuck right now. 

I have never taken 4 o'clock class before.  I was so excited when I was in the class at the first day.  Everybody looked active and good at this subject matter.  I thought this class might be bored, but I was wrong.  Professor and everybody in the class made the class go fast.