For this blog post I'm going to talk about a story in essay packet 2 - Living Close to the Knives. I think this essay did an excellent job of explaining what it is like to be a homosexual, more specifically a homosexual with HIV/AIDS. The narrator of the story gives the audience some insight in to what emotions are involved with feeling like an outsider and not fitting in with societies norm. The following passage gives a glimpse into how the narrator feels "Ever since my teenage years, I've experienced the sensation of seeing myself from miles above the earth, as if from the clouds. I see the tiny human form of myself from overhead either sitting or moving through this clockwork of civilization." This passage explained how the narrator felt, since a young age, as if he is not being himself. This was one of the first clues that the narrator and the man in the hospital were partners.
I think the little breaks with facts about whales were random thoughts by the narrator as he was seeing his partner falling apart from AIDS. seeing his partner struggle to survive made him think of a sharply contrasted situation of a healthy, powerful animal and the feats they can attain. I hope that makes sense.
The most shocking part of the story was the lengths AIDS victims go in attempting to cure the disease. One part from the story explains how vaccines, developed from human feces and typhoid shots that have side effects of extremely high fevers, are administered to hopeful AIDS victims. Maybe it's a monetary issue? Basketball legend Magic Johnson was HIV positive 20 years ago and he seems to be healthy today.
The end of this essay gives you a feeling of how many people hate, simply because of the differences in people. The narrator refers to a quote by a politician he read in a newspaper "To solve the problem of AIDS just shoot the queers..." He also remembered reading a quote from another government official saying "What you want is a little place; an island where you can isolate these people so they can bang each other up with this AIDS virus..."
I don't know if this essay is fiction or non-fiction, but i do know that there are people around the world that chose to hate people based on any possible reason they can find. This story brings up two controversial issues that humans continue to face in the 21st century, from the eyes of the gay community and the many people infected with AIDS.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Blog Response #11
For this blog response, I'm going to talk about the three essays we talked about in class on Tuesday The Fine Art of Sighing, Crumbling Expectations, and Essay on the Sublimation of Dying. All of these essays are similar in the sense that they all talk about grieving someone that is dying or already dead. Although, The Fine Art of Sighing does not talk about grieving, sighing can be connected with grieving because sighing is a emphasized release of air, which is kind of what you are trying to do when grieving over someone - let go and release, never forgetting about them but letting them go.
The Fine Art of Sighing used an interesting way of showing that we are all connected - through sighs. The author could have used many other things to show we are connected like the desire to reproduce or the hunger for nourishment, but he used sighing, I though that was a creative take on the connection between all of us humans. I also thought Cooper did an excellent job of describing what a sigh is creatively and creating an image of what a sigh is.
Crumbling Expectations did an excellent job of telling a story about a man that came up short in many different aspects. The father cheated on his wife, ruined his business relationships, and lost his resort. This story reminds me of To After That how it is a story withing another story. The main narrator is explaining about a novel his father had written about a resort owner who's resort fell into Lake Michigan. Like a student said in class, there is a parallel drawn between the fathers body falling apart from cancer and the story about a man whose life is falling apart.
The last essay that I'm going to talk about is a tough one to fully understand. The way it is formatted and the style in which it is written is unusual. I thought that it was formatted in fragments (synthesis I, synthesis II, etc.) to show the transformation from life to death. Synthesis means combining two or more things together, so I thought that it also added to my theory, when someone dies it can seem like the line between life and death is paper thin. The author talks a great deal about language and text, what she should revise in her text. This also reminded me of the writing style of To After That.
To me, all of these essays seemed connected by the fact that they are dealing with the release of something or someone and the fact that they are an essay talking about writing another essay.
The Fine Art of Sighing used an interesting way of showing that we are all connected - through sighs. The author could have used many other things to show we are connected like the desire to reproduce or the hunger for nourishment, but he used sighing, I though that was a creative take on the connection between all of us humans. I also thought Cooper did an excellent job of describing what a sigh is creatively and creating an image of what a sigh is.
Crumbling Expectations did an excellent job of telling a story about a man that came up short in many different aspects. The father cheated on his wife, ruined his business relationships, and lost his resort. This story reminds me of To After That how it is a story withing another story. The main narrator is explaining about a novel his father had written about a resort owner who's resort fell into Lake Michigan. Like a student said in class, there is a parallel drawn between the fathers body falling apart from cancer and the story about a man whose life is falling apart.
The last essay that I'm going to talk about is a tough one to fully understand. The way it is formatted and the style in which it is written is unusual. I thought that it was formatted in fragments (synthesis I, synthesis II, etc.) to show the transformation from life to death. Synthesis means combining two or more things together, so I thought that it also added to my theory, when someone dies it can seem like the line between life and death is paper thin. The author talks a great deal about language and text, what she should revise in her text. This also reminded me of the writing style of To After That.
To me, all of these essays seemed connected by the fact that they are dealing with the release of something or someone and the fact that they are an essay talking about writing another essay.
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