The movie Kafka by Steven Soderbergh identifies how the main character, Kafka, is struggling between two opposing ideas. In the movie, Kafka has been asked to join a secret group set to bring down the happenings inside the nearby castle by planting a bomb. He has two choices. First of all he can decide to go with it and join the revolutionaries fight, or he can choose to ignore it and try to blend in with normal society as well as he can. It’s these two opposing influences that Kafka is forced to make a decision about.
Kafka is pulled into the anti-castle world when his best friend Eduard is murdered. As a result of this a secretary at his job, who is in on the whole thing, approaches him to get him to join her group. Kafka is intrigued and wants to meet the gang, but he is not sure if he wants to go all in.
Once Kafka realizes that the group he has been inducted into wants him to go inside the castle and plant a bomb he pulls away as much as he can. It is this pulling away that may have saved his life. The rest of the group is murdered but because Kafka wasn’t there he gets away to eventually fight the fight against the castle and accomplish the goals of the group he once tried to get away from.
Kafka is torn between two sides of a conflict and he is not sure which way to go, at first he is drawn in but realizes the goals and pulls himself back. After some time Kafka realizes that if he wants to continue to live he must join the group in full force and help them out with their biggest achievement. That is killing the enemy before they kill you.
11/8/07
11/7/07
The Hunger Artist
All the preparation for this day had finally come. The hunger artist could finally perform his art. The day he claimed into his cage he made a promise to the cheering crowd not to come out for any reason, not even food, for another forty days, and the door was locked tight. Many people came to see the spectacle and that’s the way the artist liked it. Some of the onlookers didn’t believe his true fasting abilities and sat for hours hatching for the slightest scrap of food to be devoured by the thin man. Other true believers stood and watched with their full bellies and happy jobs. But the hunger artist with nowhere else to go stayed where he was.
This frail man who practiced his art any time he could, loved his job. The amazed children who came and felt his bony arms, the crowd of the cheer and his self-denial, and the actual act of not eating pleased him.
After the forty days he was led out of his cage and shown to the cheering crowd how small his body had become. The crowd cheered as always, and after some time the artist was shown to some food where the entire crowd toasted to his self-denial.
Several years of this wore down and the old man. He now wanted to not eat for longer, and he was tired of only going forty days. So he left the act and joined a circus. Here he was left to his own devices. There was no acting frail and he was allowed to fast as much as he wanted. With no limits he was forced to continue fasting, with this continued fasting the viewers got tired of his antics. The hunger artist was left in a cage in a small passageway to the animals and was just another obstacle in everyone’s way. It was a consensus with everyone that it would be better if he just left.
With no other choices as he was now an old man and enjoyed fasting so much he had no other choice but to stay. After the circus lost count of how many days he had been at his job so did the artist. He began to not even enjoy the few onlookers who had the time to glance at the body in a cage on the way to the animals. One day the nuisance died and it was a turning point for the cage. It could finally have an occupant who was interesting and drew a crowd of cheering onlookers, one thing the hunger artist once was able to do but had lost in his final performance in which he died doing what he once loved to do.
The cage was filled with a leopard, which was lively and jumped at the passing crowds and was especially great at feeding times when it would rip into its food and devour it. Once the circus got rid of the burden known as the hunger artist it could now thrive in everything it did.
1. Why did the hunger artist undergo his transformation?
2. Is the hunger artist a symbol for today’s society?
3. Why would the hunger artist starve himself to death just because he didn’t like to eat?
4. How would the artist survive for forty days without any food?Was the artist really that old when he died?
This frail man who practiced his art any time he could, loved his job. The amazed children who came and felt his bony arms, the crowd of the cheer and his self-denial, and the actual act of not eating pleased him.
After the forty days he was led out of his cage and shown to the cheering crowd how small his body had become. The crowd cheered as always, and after some time the artist was shown to some food where the entire crowd toasted to his self-denial.
Several years of this wore down and the old man. He now wanted to not eat for longer, and he was tired of only going forty days. So he left the act and joined a circus. Here he was left to his own devices. There was no acting frail and he was allowed to fast as much as he wanted. With no limits he was forced to continue fasting, with this continued fasting the viewers got tired of his antics. The hunger artist was left in a cage in a small passageway to the animals and was just another obstacle in everyone’s way. It was a consensus with everyone that it would be better if he just left.
With no other choices as he was now an old man and enjoyed fasting so much he had no other choice but to stay. After the circus lost count of how many days he had been at his job so did the artist. He began to not even enjoy the few onlookers who had the time to glance at the body in a cage on the way to the animals. One day the nuisance died and it was a turning point for the cage. It could finally have an occupant who was interesting and drew a crowd of cheering onlookers, one thing the hunger artist once was able to do but had lost in his final performance in which he died doing what he once loved to do.
The cage was filled with a leopard, which was lively and jumped at the passing crowds and was especially great at feeding times when it would rip into its food and devour it. Once the circus got rid of the burden known as the hunger artist it could now thrive in everything it did.
1. Why did the hunger artist undergo his transformation?
2. Is the hunger artist a symbol for today’s society?
3. Why would the hunger artist starve himself to death just because he didn’t like to eat?
4. How would the artist survive for forty days without any food?Was the artist really that old when he died?
10/23/07
Why The Future Doesn't Need Us
In Why The Future Doesn't Need Us by Bill Joy the thesis is that if humans become too reliant on robots we will let them control out lives and our survival will actually depend on these intelligent machines. To avoid becoming obsolete humans need to not increase our reliance on machines to do our jobs. If we let them do everything for us out mere existence will depend on them doing our jobs. With robots doing our jobs who needs humans and there will be the elite few who tell the robots what needs to be done, everybody else will be eliminated. Institutions are contributing to this "inevitability" by playing the machines game. They let their jobs be taken by machines, the exact opposite of what needs to be done to continue our lives as we now know them.
Huxley would agree with Joy's article. This is because Huxley's fears that too many technological advances and the oversimplification of human existence creates a dystopian society, just like Joy. Joy's argument has a strong basis. It seams plausible but some of the greater details he goes into are just his speculation and fears playing their way into his article. Joy's literary devices he uses are Rhetoric language and extensive imagery, he depicts the picture exactly in your head and therefore helps to push his ideas to greater understanding. This article connects to BNW by Joy's depiction of a dystopian society with great technological advances and an oversimplification of the human life.
Huxley would agree with Joy's article. This is because Huxley's fears that too many technological advances and the oversimplification of human existence creates a dystopian society, just like Joy. Joy's argument has a strong basis. It seams plausible but some of the greater details he goes into are just his speculation and fears playing their way into his article. Joy's literary devices he uses are Rhetoric language and extensive imagery, he depicts the picture exactly in your head and therefore helps to push his ideas to greater understanding. This article connects to BNW by Joy's depiction of a dystopian society with great technological advances and an oversimplification of the human life.
10/16/07
Harrison Bergeron
Vonnegut is satirizing current societies intellegence and memory tendencies.The story is being told from the point of view from hazel bergeron. If Vonnegut had told the story from the 1st person it would not of had the nat caring or not paying attention unintellegence that it contains.This Quote exemplifies cuttent society with its technology is no less advanced than the advanced future technology.
10/7/07
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas is not so much a story but a description of a town. Omelas is a beautiful town with citizens and nice buildings. There is a horse race to begin summer. There is a child locked in a dirty room who only gets a little food every day and is never talked to, the child has to just sit in its own feces and pick its nose all day. For some reason this is why everyone in the town is doing so well and if the child is let out then nobody in the town would be happy anymore.
This story is about one bad thing in the town that makes the rest of the town happy. In 1984 the societies bad thing that makes everybody happy in Winston’s eyes is Big Brother. This is the only connection to 1984 I can make because The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas made no sense to me.
This description of a town uses imagery to demonstrate the happiness of everyone and the pain of the child.
5 Questions-
1. What was the meaning of the piece?
2. How did the child’s pain help the town?
3. What’s the point in including the horse race?
4. Is the child’s pain a symbol for something else?
5. What’s up with the ones who walked away from Omelas?
This story is about one bad thing in the town that makes the rest of the town happy. In 1984 the societies bad thing that makes everybody happy in Winston’s eyes is Big Brother. This is the only connection to 1984 I can make because The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas made no sense to me.
This description of a town uses imagery to demonstrate the happiness of everyone and the pain of the child.
5 Questions-
1. What was the meaning of the piece?
2. How did the child’s pain help the town?
3. What’s the point in including the horse race?
4. Is the child’s pain a symbol for something else?
5. What’s up with the ones who walked away from Omelas?
10/1/07
Asimov Reading Response
Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov is a short story in which a robot named Elvex has dreams of ruling over other robots and he is a real man. In the end he is punished for free thinking by the destroying of his positronic brain. Similar to this in 1984 Winston Smith is a member of a conformist party. He thinks for himself in the longing for something better, as in the downfall of the party. Once the party figures this out he is brought in for questioning and torture. Throughout this his entire way of thinking is changed and he believes in the ways of the party. In both of these pieces of literature a minority of the working class have thoughts of overpowering the higher power and become themselves the higher power. Despite the main ideas of the two pieces in Robot Dreams Elvex dreams of himself taking on the strong human characteristics of knowledge and power, and most importantly the human form, while the beings he rules take all the weak characteristics such as the physical weakness of human and the form of a robot. In1984 Winston just wants to overthrow the current party in power but not necessarily become what they once were.
I believe that if George Orwell and Isaac Asimov were to meet they would agree on the main ideas of what they are trying to say but not on the details as their books take different paths into the future, such as Asimov's Robots and Orwell's Big Brother. I believe this because of how their stories differ and are similar.
I believe that if George Orwell and Isaac Asimov were to meet they would agree on the main ideas of what they are trying to say but not on the details as their books take different paths into the future, such as Asimov's Robots and Orwell's Big Brother. I believe this because of how their stories differ and are similar.
9/30/07
Goals
Top 3 colleges-
U of M Ann Arbor
U of M Dearborn
Michigan State
GPA Goal-
3.8
Goal for A.P. exam-
4
Person helping with essays-
Nobody yet
U of M Ann Arbor
U of M Dearborn
Michigan State
GPA Goal-
3.8
Goal for A.P. exam-
4
Person helping with essays-
Nobody yet
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