The Long and Winding Road

I loved this novel.

This type of novel is the sort of novel that I love. I really enjoy post-apocalyptic fiction. My book collection is a good example of this. Albeit my novels are typically related to the zombie apocalypse, I really do enjoy the whole trope of having to survive, and returning to basics.

One of my favourite video games is a good throwback to this trope. I really enjoy a game called Fallout 3, which is set after a nuclear apocalypse, is a good example of this trope. It talks about the need to survive in the barren Wasteland. What I personally enjoy is how all branches of humanity can be shown. The worst and best reaches of the human soul can be shown in this type of science-fiction. In The Road, as the prime example, the pure evil of people, who have descended to killing, cooking, and eating people and even infants. However, in the complete other side of the spectrum is the father and son. These two are the complete different, they want to help people and refuse to descend to the level of eating people, even though that is the most readily available food source. They are more willing to take hardship to the betterment of other people than they are to have food that would help you survive.

Omniscient Narrators

In this chapter of How Fiction Works, the author has an interesting discussion about how narrators can seem Omniscient, and not actually be all that omniscient. He mentions that because we are drawn into the narrators mindset, it can seem as if they are all-knowing. I can see what he is saying. When you are completly enveloped in a person's opinions, their ideals and their beliefs, how can it not seem as if they are all knowing?  The Road is interesting way to look at this. You never see any other characters in the novel, and that completly removes any outside opinion, therefore making the father's opinion the only one we know.

This relates to another article we read, 'Forest of Civilzation'. In this article, we discussed how knowledge is affected by religion. The main point is that humans were oblivious to knowledge, and therefore everything they knew was correct. This is the same in The Road, while what the father belives might be wrong, we know no better from the point of view, and therefore he is all knowing. It all goes back to the old argument of 'Does a tree falling the forest with nobody around make a sound?'. I believe that it does, and by beliveing in it, it is the truth. That makes it correct knowledge. If nobody can refute the claim that something is correct, then it is. In extension, if there is only one opinion, it must be the correct opinion, further supporting the view that the narrator is omniscient.

Commentary Outline

This is an interesting extract, and is quite fun to deconstruct, because the author brings across a large variety of different opinions throughout the piece, sometimes even contadictory ones. Throughout the piece, of which the theme is Love, she talks about it from a variety of points of views. She speaks about it from the the point of view of a woman, and also she tries to interperet Love from the male point of view. The theme of this piece is easily summed up as the way that Love twists Truth. To start off the interpretation, Offrred, the speaker, talks about how men made light of Love, in this case the Commander. The speaker is hurt that he believes that Love is a triviality, or whim. She talks about how it is central to a beings existence.

The most interesting piece to deconstruct is the last couple of paragraphs. In this extract, Offred talks about how hard Love is to find, and when the man she tried to love was difficult to, (which I belive is an allusion to her feelings for the Commander), the more Love exists. She talks about how this love is hard to remember, and when it is remembered it brings pain. I belive that this is an allusion to her lost husband, Luke and the daughter that is never named. Another allusion to the theme is when Offred speaks about how she sees a man who is darker and has a more cavernous face at night, when he is asleep than during the day. It is as if the love that she, or the other women she is talking about, has perverted the man, so that all she thinks about the man is the love she has for him, which she doesn't see when he is asleep, because his personality isn't there. This also leads onto the final quote of the extract, 'What if he doesn't love me?'. This one quote puts a lot of emphasis on the theme, and also the message that Offred is talking about in this extract.  Offred mentions how the more difficult it is to love the man, the easier it is to belive in Love. If you don't know if a man loves you, it must be difficult to love him, and therefore, the belief in Love is heightened. This approach to Love, and the relationship it has with difficulty relates hand-in-hand to Hope, which is another imporant part of both this extract and the story itself.

Myth, Legend, or Tale?

First of all, I'd like to tell everybody about an interesting fact. The United States spends more money on pornogrophy than the entire sum of Sub-Saharan Africa's national debt. Stating this fact shows nothing apart from the fact that a lot of men watch or read pornography. However, in this article, titled the Beauty Myth, the authour uses pornogrophy as a way of saying that women are being debased in this pornogrophy.  As the authour states, the media industry making the most money at this point in time is porn. This is interesting, as it seems to be rising as do women's rights. I believe it is simply because of the ease with which it becomes accessible. Five years ago, we did not have as good internet as we do now. This means that, as internet becomes more and more accessible, we are able to access things such as porn more easily. I belive that the author is connecting two un-related facts. She is doing the same thing as newspapers, who will take something such as Ice-cream sales rising, and shark attacks rising as being related. When it is infact an outside force, such as it being summer, that affects the results of the statistic.

She talks about how how women are feeling worse about their appearance than their grandmothers did, despite all the moving forward for the feminist movement in others. I believe that again there is an explanation for this in advancing technology. Women in the 1800's, while having to worry about their experience, didn't have as much of an incentive, as their image, when recorded, could be modified easily, as it was predominantly done using portraits that're painted. Any photographs that were taken were in black and white and therefore the colouration of the women didn't matter. Nowadays, any pictures taken will persist for ages, and are in colour. Anybody can see today's photographs, as social media sites such as Facebook and Flickr! come along. These sites are enabling people to easily comment on each others appearances, and nobody wants to have bad comments on their appearances, leading women to caring about their appearances a lot more.

In one of Alex Millers posts, he talks about how the beauty myth gives women an image to strive for. 'One can go through pictures of supermodels and understand why society and you would consider them attractive. If there wasn't an accepted form of beauty than women would not have an image to pursue.'  I agree with Alex, as without these outside influences, women (and men, who also have influences) would have no image to strive for. This would have many different effects. Number one, it would be difficult to tell who you think is attractive, because what is attractiveness but a benchmark against the accepted appearance. Number two, thousands of companies, and people, would be out of buisness, because they make their money off people buying their clothes to get closer to the beauty myth. Because of this, I believe that the reason the beauty myth was created was exactly for the reason that women would buy items from the purveyors of the myth.

Plastic Infestation

A Barbie doll. Who hasn't heard of one? Essentially a plastic doll, this figurine has infested itself into Western-culture. One example of how it has infested culture is the recent Toy Story 3. The first two movies contained typical childrens toys, like a cowboy and a spaceman. This most recent movie shows Barbie AND her male counter-part Ken as toys that have been thrown away, linking them to nostalgia and the yesteryear. Now, I never owned a Barbie, but I can understand the effect that they have on a girl's memory. I can imagine how seeing one reminds them of games they used to play. In fact, I can relate this to my own experiences with videogames.

I started gaming when I was about 8, and that was on my parents computer. I played a game called Rogue Squadron 3D, and if I play it now, it still reminds me of when I was young. My father has the same reaction when we watch an older TV show, like Black Books or the original Star Trek. Just the other day, we watched Batman 1966, which was both amazing for him, to go back to when he first saw it, and for me, having never seen it.

On the other side, the way that Barbie has essentially 'milked' the success of its brand is, to me, disgusting. The producers of Barbie, who I believe are Hasbro, have churned out version after version of the doll, some of which are frankly inappropriate and disgusting for children. The anatomically correct barbie, with sex toys, is just not needed in a kids toy. I can understand the point that Hasbro are making, as why stop making a toy that sells. Its like stopping releasing movies or books. And although I said it was disgusting earlier, I throughly love the 'milking' of the Star Wars francise, which is the same ploy. Star Wars Episode IV has alone made over $4 billion dollars, which is a lot of money, quite frankly.