Everything Changes Optimistically

Brooker T.Washington's speech in my opinion is directed toward African Americans. The speech provides a complete different perspective on segregation and it is one that suddenly gives hope to those who are considered inferior. Cast Down Your Bucket. In other words, make the best of the opportunities you have around you, even if you didn't start at the top of the pyramid.

Make friends with those surrounding you. Unfortunately, our society is one in which people do tend to favour those who are liked. Blacks at the time were at the bottom of the pyramid but not necessarily unliked by everyone. In Washington's perspective, African Americans still had plenty of opportunities in the industry. After all, who was going to do all the work?

Admirable. Blacks were at the bottom of the pyramid, were basically considered worthless yet Washington gives hope to each and every one of them by showing them exactly how many opportunities they had and how without them, the industry was nothing.

Eternal Social Structures

The Dead family is a rich black family living in the United States. Do they have the same privileges when compared to a rich white family? No.

Why is this?

Definition of social structure: in sociology, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together. Social structure is often treated together with the concept of social change, which deals with the forces that change the social structure and the organization of society. (Dictionary.com)

The social structure at the time was one in which Blacks belonged in the bottom of the pyramid, whites at the top. Blacks were associated with being poor, inferior, and basically useless. Only a very small part of them were successful or rich, but still definitely not considered equal. Why? 

Because society bases it's opinions on stereotypes. Blacks were supposed to be useless and inferior so every time they saw a black person they'd consider them exactly this. 

Now, many people think thats all in the past but it really isn't. In the U.S. and probably in more places around the world if a white person and a black person are both applying for a job the employer is most likely to accept the white person. Why? Because stereotypes stick. 

There has been social change since organization has varied tremendously with the years and segregation is no longer an issue, but this doesn't mean that people are still treated as equals. If it's not discrimination against blacks it's against women and if it's not this it's against gay rights, etc. 

 Will there ever be a change in the way people view those surrounding them? In the way they constantly judge or create false labels  that lead to stereotypes?  

How Do You Know It's True?

I found many similarities between chapters K, m, and N of Reality Hunger and "Brief Lives." The greatest similarity I found was the fact that in both pieces we can see how extremely unreliable a memoir can be. Shields states that we usually don't question memoirs but that for all we know, someone could very well base their memoirs on pure lies. How do we know that in "Brief Lives" the information that was told in the interviews or on the back of post it notes actually did happen? Why do we not doubt these stories and believe everything we hear or read about? 

Well, it's because these simple stories fit into our notion of reality. The stories to us seem both possible and real, but then again, what is real? We believe what we think can happen, what we think did happen. Think about it, why would you every doubt in a person that is telling a story that is completely  plausible? 

This left me thinking until I realized that everyone chooses to believe in different things based on their notion of reality. This is an absurd example but if someone thinks that pigs may fly and another person tells them that they have indeed seen a pig fly then the story will probably be versatile to our believer. On the contrary, if this same narrator tells his experience to a person that doesn't believe in this then that person will be sure it's a lie. Therefore, our notion of reality directly affects our perception of what is true. 

The Originality of Nothingness

Veracious Fragments

"Genre is a minimum-security prison." (pg. 70)

What is a minimum- security prison? Well, a prison you can easily get out off. A prison in which you can move within the cells with no problem and have freedom. I like to think that when you right you can explore the different ways of writing. For example, if you write fiction you don't necessarily have to stick to one style of writing fiction, you can jump around. In fact, you can even incorporate many different styles within a piece. part from that a writer doesn't necessarily have to be known for writing in one specific genre. They can get out of this genre prison and express themselves writing in a variety of genres. The thing is sometimes writers prefer staying in these minimum-security prisons because it's safer inside.

"We're overwhelmed right now by calamitous information.The real overwhelms the fictional, is incomparable more compelling than an invented drama." (pg. 82) 

Whenever I am interested in reading a book I usually chose something that is indeed based on a true story. It makes it all the more interesting. Maybe its the fact that as we read we become more enthusiastic knowing that most of the details of what we're reading actually did happen. That the story of this text is not far from reality and is not only possible but real. It's a fact. Sure, there are some novels and fiction pieces that are extremely well written and very interesting but, to me at least, it is sometimes disappointing to know that what you'rereading about it only a fragment of an author's imagination, nonrealistic, nonexistent.

"Facts have gravitas." (pg. 86)

Facts are often associated with seriousness, meaning they will always be real. We choose to believe what seems most real to us, therefore we automatically choose to believe facts. But could a fact not be real? Does that make it not a fact? According to dictionary.com a fact is something that actually exists; reality; truth. A fact is real. A fact is not a fact if it never occurred.

French Influence On English

I feel that the grade I got was adequate. This is because once I reread my paper I did realize that it definitely had too much exposition and not a lot of analyzing. Some of the paragraphs in my paper weren't objective but I didn't really rush the paper.

I think I might have misunderstood what the objective of the assignment was because I did try to connect the things that I read about in my investigation such as stating what patterns I noticed with the words deriving from the French Language. Once I read Gabriela's paper and listened to the insight on my paper I realized that I definitely should have done a narrower topic. That could have been a reason why my paper turned out more expository than analytical, there was just too much information to analyze closely.

Difficult or not?

At first when I read that we had to investigate one thing that Shields alludes I thought this was going to be very difficult. I thought this because many times we don't even realize that the author is actually alluding while we read and I thought I was going to have to pay extreme close attention to the reading and google just about every word. I'm not saying that I didn't pay close attention but I definitely did not close read all the time because the Shields way of writing is actually very direct and it's nearly impossible to miss when he alludes.

A book that shows up constantly in Shields writing is the Iliad. Of course it does, as he states it, it's one of the first masterpieces that have been written. This caught my attention because In 9th grade the first book I had to read for Pre-AP Spanish was the Iliad. I remember I thought that I would never understand the book and that I was going to definitely need to read Spark Notes or in this case Rincondelvago once I finished, but I was wrong. Despite the years it has The Iliad, by Homer, actually ended up being one of my favourite books and well although at times it may be a tough read, it's understandable.

I therefore decided to do more research on this book because I realized that I not only read it, but I also read about it in many other texts yet I never really knew much about it's author or historical context. Obviously homecoming does appear a lot in the Iliad but I had no idea that this was an actual theme that was common among Greek Literature. This theme is actually referred to as Nostos and is one that shows up both in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Another Greek theme that I also had no idea about is Kleos, the concept of glory earned in heroic battle.

I then realized that, although it seems pretty obvious, it's extremely helpful to conduct an investigation over a book that you're reading. This is due to the fact that many times we read books independently (by this I mean not with a class) and we just don't discuss them. When this occurs we sometimes don't understand the historical context of this book or the true importance of it, meaning that we have not taken full advantage of the reading.