I had a hard time deciding what word to write about in my blog this week. I finally decided to do a search on the terms \u201cblack\u201d, which appeared 88 times; \u201cwhite\u201d, which appeared 85 times; and then, finally, \u201cgray\u201d, which only appeared 24 times. I found this interesting because so much of the book is dedicated to shedding light on the indefinable areas of life that cannot be categorized, such as whether the comet was a good thing to happen to earth, or a terrible thing. After searching the word \u201cgray\u201d and looking at what terms came up, I decided I finally had my blog topic.
\nThe main thing I noticed was that \u201cgray\u201d almost always was an adjective used to describe light. It even applies twice in one sentence on page 380, saying, \u201cFor as far as they both could see in the gray twilight there was nothing but a silver-gray expanse of rain-splattered water\u201d. Furthermore on page 434, the sentence reads, \u201cthe view went from gray-white gradually to gray-dark\u201d. There are occasional references to gray being the color of Sen. Jellison\u2019s hair (p. 513) or the color of Harry\u2019s worn uniform (p. 507), but for the majority of results, the word \u201cgray\u201d was in reference to the color of the sky or the color of the light that the sky produced.
\nI can\u2019t help but think that this is intentional. While in class we studied the opposing categories that this book deals with at the surface (male vs. female, science vs. entertainment, US Democracy versus Soviet Communism), there surely is so much about the disaster of the comet strike that cannot be lumped into a nice, neat category such as \u201cGood\u201d or \u201cEvil\u201d. For instance, we cannot honestly say whether this will make life better or worse for future civilizations. We really aren\u2019t able to comment on whether this makes life better for Maureen, or whether Eileen is happier now that she has lost her independence. There is chaos and confusion that comes with the strike of the comet, and I think that the color \u201cgray\u201d is frequently referenced, particularly in natural images, to underscore the fact that we can\u2019t always categorize life as neatly as we would like to. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a hard time deciding what word to write about in my blog this week. I finally decided to do a search on the terms \u201cblack\u201d, which appeared 88 times; \u201cwhite\u201d, which appeared 85 times; and then, finally, \u201cgray\u201d, which only appeared 24 times. I found this interesting because so much of the book… Continue reading shades of gray<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[28,20,3,36,34,29,27,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}