Tuesday 28 September 2010

Truth

During our discussion last English class, we discusses a lot of interesting items, such as fractals, the fact that places can or cannot exists, and the fact that all truths are subjective. I talked about how a die will always show a number. This was an interesting topic to discuss with the rest of the class, especially when somebody stated that a die could be a cube with different colours on each side. I was able to rebut to this by saying that by removing the numbers from the die it is reduced to being a simple cube. Another interesting discussion was the one about the only objective truth being that all truths are subjective. I didn't get a chance to talk about this in the lesson, but I belive it would be a fun topic to discuss now. By saying that the only objective truth is that all truths are subjective, you create a pardox. It is akin to saying 'everything I say is a lie'. By saying that you are lying, which means that you can say some true things, meaning that what you just said was a lie. By saying that all truths are subjective, you are saying that they only apply at a certain time, meaning that there are no truths. By saying this, you are able to remove the fact that all truths are subjective from the equation, making it false.

Truth however, is never constant, as is demonstrated in We. People are able to modify the truth to talk about what they want to be shown. This is evident by O'brian being able to make the main character, Winston, believe that 2+2=5, even though it doesn't.

Monday 20 September 2010

Immersion in a World

This chapter, entitled The Psychology of the Novel mentions suspension of disbelief, a topic that he uses to explain why some students like Kafka's Metamorphosis, and why some students don't. The students that don't like the story are the ones that are unable to immerse themselves into the fantasy of a man transforming into a cockroach. This is because they were unable to understand what was going on, which distanced them from the characters, and therefore the story. The people that were able to immerse themselves in the story therefore enjoyed it more. On a personal level, this act of suspending disbelief appeals to me, as a Dungeons and Dragons gamer. In reading a novel, and more so in acting out a character in a completly different world, it is important to use suspension of belief. To talk about the D&D game a little bit further, it is a game where the players are placed in danger. If the players are not immersed in the world, then they don't feel the danger, which removes the risk from the game. This results in a lack of fun, because where is fun without the risk or danger. While this doesn't extend to suspension of disbelief in novels, it is still important from a gaming point of view. In novels, suspension of disbelief is a little less important. Because the reader doesn't have anything invested in the novel, apart from the money the spent on it, the book needs to draw them in. This results in the characters needing to be easier to understand. They do this by making sure that the story makes sense and that there are no plotholes.