cats cradle blog

During the time of modernism, people looked for one thing..........the truth.  They wanted to know how this was made or if people we hear about in legends really existed.  Post-modernism is usually where people are given the truth and they have to decide now whether they choose to believe it or not.  They must put their own knowledge into consideration and come up with their own ideas.  This not just a personal thing, but also a universal thing.

In  Cat’s Cradle we see that this book is post-modernism because they are searching for a truth and they are given all this information, now they must put it all together to believe the “real truth”.  They can be given any kind of information and for all they know it’s fake. For example, San Lorenzo had happy people in it but it was full of lies, “ McCabe dreamed of making it a utopia” (Vonnegut).  We have already discussed this in class before.  Utopias do not exist, they just cannot be really made at all.  Here in San Lorenzo there are poor people on the island but they are all joyful of it.  They are told that people live like this, are happy.  The people do not know any better but to believe their leaders.  In our society we would want to know that there was a better way of living if people lived in poverty.  The thing is though, we do know of a better way of living, but some of us cannot change our status.  In the novel there are people who live in a better society, but they cannot share it with the people on the island because it would be useless.  They would just not believe all this blasphemy that is being told to them about the way they live.

END OF BNW

Reading this book was very challenging in the beginning.  I understood that the government was making embryos and they did like people giving birth to babies.  Then we had them saying something about life after ford invented the assembly line.  This is still a very confusing novel to me.

            I will be arguing that people have a hard time to except new ideas when they are influenced by a greater power.  For example, when the embryos are brought up as children they learn to do a job.  For the rest of their lives all they will do is do this particular job and love it until they die.  You one can tell them that their job is boring because they will simply not listen to them.  The government has done all they can so that outside influences will not affect them. 

            In my essay I will use the video by Sir Ken Robinson.  It reminded me of BNW right away.  He said something about education is like an assembly line.  I thought about the kids in BNW were learning things just like on an assembly line.  A job needs workers and then the government makes workers by teaching them what to do.  They are making workers and teaching them at the same time. 

            Another source I will use is Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  John makes a lot of references to Shakespeare’s plays.  Caliban was cast out of society and so was John and his mother.  They were put on a island and were classified as people who didn’t not follow the rules of society.  John was given birth by his mother.  In this world giving birth is discussing and against society.  The irony is making artificial kids is against the rules of nature and John is being excluded from the world.     

Video and BNW

The video was pretty good and I thought it was very similar to the principles of Brave New World.  Sir Ken Robinson makes the point that he believes we have a system of education that is modeled around the interests of industrialization.  In the world after Ford, that’s basically what the education system is like.  Kids are bred to do things that will help the industry and economy of the state.  Whatever is in need at the time, that’s what the kids learned to do.  He continues on to say that children are taught in batches and separated in different groups.  Furthermore, in the BNW the government separates the children into groups as well and a certain group can work harder than the other,” alpha children….work harder than we do”(26) .  Sometimes the stronger kids are put into one group so they can be supreme in society.  Sir Robinson wants us to go away from this sort of production line mentality.  We shouldn’t  separate children into groups because essentially they are all the same.  Children in our world get very bored about the things that are taught to them.  We have a new knowledge being presented to us but refuse to accept the information because we do not find them very important.  In Ford’s world a child will be given information and they will love it.  Also, they will be presented with new information also but, they will not take it in because they are trained to only know a certain thing.  They are ignorant of new information if it does not play into the skills they were given to by the government.  They do not know any better and will never learn a new trade.  If they are told to work in a factory, that’s what they’ll do forever.

CH 3 BNW

So far, we have reached an understanding of where the principles of life are different in the reality after Ford created the assembly line.  People are breed to do things that are seemed fit for society.  If they need to work then that’s what they love to do.

“Mothers and Fathers, brothers, and sisters…… but there were also husbands, wives, lovers….there were also monogamy and romance” (39).  From this quote we see that the kids of this world have not heard these words before.  Or they have and been taught that they are bad words or funny words that you only here in a certain class.  So, we can obviously see that the kids do not have mothers or fathers.  This is the manipulation of reality.  They have a “creator” not a loving mother and father that fell in love and reproduced the natural way of life.  They are playing with the circle of life.  They are playing “God” in a sense.  The desire of having a family will cease to exist.  You cannot reproduce so you will have an artificial family.  There will be no desire or passion for love.  A girl and boy cannot fall in love and want to have kids.  It’s not the way it works in this world.  There’s no desire to do anything fun or enjoyable.  People are programmed to do what the government sees as expectable.  If there is a shortage of farmers they will train kids to farm and farm every day.  It’s what they will love to do because they do not know any better.  The world itself would be manipulation.  They do not know if the rest of the world is like this.  They do not have the temptation to read a book or ask if this is really how people lived.

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO????

In discussions of The Tempest, the traditional view is to consider how Prospero had taken over Caliban and the island just like the principles of colonization.  However, there may be other ways to think about this text.  For one thing, Stephen Greenblattt’s article “The Best Way To Kill Our Literary Inheritance Is To Turn It into a Decorous Celebration of the New World Order” explains that there is always a deeper meaning in works of literature that are drowned out by readers or critics who do not understand the true meaning.  Although, George Will contends that a writer has a predetermined notion about what his or hers writing will be and no one can argue that.  Therefore, taking these positions into account, we can see that they’re can be many different meanings of The Tempest.

We can say that people believe that Caliban is being ruled over by Prospero just like how the Europeans came over to the New World and took over the Indian’s lands without remorse.  George Will would say that this is the correct assumption for the play.  He would say that this is what Shakespeare wanted the play to be about but, of course we can never be certain now.  Other might say that maybe there’s another interpretation of the play, but under the principles of Will there can be millions but, the only one that matters is that of the one who wrote the master piece.

I would agree with Greenblatt.  Even though, it could be clear that colonization plays a factor but, I think Shakespeare has hidden a deeper meaning to the play.  I have no idea what it could be.  Once I start to analyze the text more. Maybe something will come up, but for now I believe that there’s more than just colonization.  Maybe there’s some sort of life lesson to be heard.

THE ARTICLES ABOUT LITERATURE

Both these articles make difficult to understand what the author’s points are.  This is what I came up with. 

Will wrote that he believed that every literature is written using the principles of political ideology.  Sometimes writers disguise the interests of the dominant sex, religion, and race. When a person writes they might use the male as the dominant race but, the dominant race would actually be the opposite sex.  Female writers write about their ‘oppression of patriarchal literary standards” (111).  They are upset of why they have to write about a male either human or non human to the superior gender in their literature.   Feminists do not appreciate the position they have in society today being dominated by men.

Greenblatt feels that religion, politics, and colonization will influence the way a writer writes.  These ideas need to be the center of the literature because it can help better the understanding of the world.  In his essay his he makes reference that The Tempest “is full of conspicuous allusions to contemporary debates over the project of colonization” (114).  Greenblatt is probably saying that he got his ideas about colonization from Shakespeare.  Colonization was a very high European thought.

In reading both of these articles I do not know which to pick.   I will say that I am between both arguments.  In Will’s article I thought it was interesting about the feminist opinion about men being superior in everything.  I do not believe that men are superior then woman in everything but, I do believe we are superior in some things, so my ideas will just add insult to injury.  In Greenblatts, his three theme ideas are very good but, I wouldn’t say every book should have them in there.  Depending on each book they might be able to work, but sometimes none of them can.

ACTS 2 AND 3 POST

Through Act 2 and 3 Caliban has been pushed around by everyone on the island.  They look at him as a slave.  When they ended up on that island they tried to make it theirs even though they weren’t the first ones there.  Just like how the settlers came to the New World and toke the lands of the Native Americans and made them servants and slaves.  Shakespeare’s portrayal of Caliban is that of a Native culture that was colonized by another culture because of the lack of superiority of the influence to the people.  As Caliban meets Stephano, he gives Caliban some wine “He’s a good god, who brings liquor from the heavens” (Act 2 scene 2).  This quote reminds me of how Cortez was considered a god when he had met the Aztecs.  He brought them things that they have never seen before so, they assumed they came from the heavens.  So, when Stephano gave him wine, he enjoyed it.  He was under the impression that Stephano was the master that he needed to follow.  When new influences are presented the out dated ones won’t stand a chance.  We can say that Shakespeare makes Caliban just like the people whose lands were taken because of the sense of loyalty that he has for the person that is more superior.  In a colonized country the people must follow who has the most power because they don’t have enough strength to overcome the law.  By the 19^th century the British, “were biologically superior to any other race” (236).  Prospero and Stephano both think that they are superior to Caliban.  They see him as a drunk and worthless person who they can do anything with.  Who can stop them if they are the “superior race”?  Caliban can’t break free from these influences.

THE TEMPEST ACT 1

Since Prospero and his daughter are the only people on the island he can make it seem that he has all the answers if other people were to come onshore. When he is telling his daughter the story of why then are on the island he tells her that she was too young to remember so, he can basically tell her all lies. For example, at the beginning of the story, Prospero claims that his brother” he whom next thyself of all the world I loved” (act 1 scene 2). He of course used this to his advantage making Miranda believe that her uncle was the man that sent them to this abyss to die. He is putting this notion in her mind and there’s a chance that her uncle had nothing to with it. She cannot resist this information because there’s no one else to oppose her father’s truths. Prospero tries to make the island his own world with all the things that it should be. He uses Ariel to lure in people that are shipwrecked so that he can deceive them that people they were with or loved had died or fate had sent them there. Furthermore, tells Ariel not to be unappreciated, for the fact that, “when I arrived and heard thee, that made gape the pine and let thee out” (Act 1 scene 2). Prospero has made Ariel his servant to do his deeds and she has obeyed everything that he has asked. She wants her freedom and he’s quilting with the fact that he freed her so; she must pay up her debt to him. He makes himself seem like he’s this merciful god or savior that rescued Ariel. Lastly, he uses the past of Ariel which is full of slavery and imprisonment to make her feel bad about the she has acted.

During our discussion there were many great points made. Both articles had basically the same information and arguments. Both groups came to an understanding that the Texas school board should not take out important topics and historical figures on their students books. They need to put in information that is full, not put in parts of what happened. The obvious tie to the book “1984” is changing history, but they did not change it as severely as the government of Oceania.


There was a great point made on is they change the curriculum then the AP students would be affected when they take the test. We came up with the solution that AP teachers have their own curriculum to follow and abide by. Yet, we then found that it was weird that students in the same school would learn different variations of history. The AP students would learn history one way and the kids in the regular classes would learn it another way. So, when they ever would come together and they realize part of history has been cut off, the students will be wondering what really is the true history.

The other thing we discussed is the fact that the state of Texas is changing the history book, but there is no real proof that the teachers are actually sticking to the information in it. Some teachers will teach what they want even though they are given a curriculum. There was no mention of any teacher being interviewed about their thoughts about the new textbooks. They weren’t asked if the agreed with the curriculum or if they even use it to teach. So, in the end I believe that the last line of defense is the teachers. They are the ones who decide what actually is taught to their students. A good teacher would give their students the right information and the whole truth of history.

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