I agree with Jennifer\u2019s summary of Foer\u2019s story. He attempts to create a symbol-driven handbook for categorizing the depth of emotions arising from, among other things, love and illness. But the complexity of human experience cannot be limited to the characters on a standard keyboard. The approach reminds me of Hassan\u2019s point that \u201cwe no longer know what response is adequate to our reality\u201d (23). Hassan also describes dehumanization as a process of turning emotions into an equation, calling it a \u201crevulsion against the human\u201d (20). Foer\u2019s story plays with this, but I wouldn\u2019t call it dehumanized. Actually, I think its form allows it to have an opposite effect. Obviously no generic handbook would ever have such intimate examples, and by disguising itself within generic instructions, the underlying sensitivity is exposed.<\/p>\n
I just mentioned Hassan, but I mostly didn\u2019t know what he was talking about. I\u2019m curious about what others thought of the \u201cPOSTmodernISM\u201d essay. I had a hard time with it, partly because I\u2019m unfamiliar with many of the names and works he referenced, partly because the form threw me off.<\/p>\n
As for Link, I think I liked her story better than Jennifer did, but the ending also confused me. The zombies were what initially attracted me to this story, too, and it\u2019s nice that Soap fears them but at the same time appreciates their simplicity. I don\u2019t consider them much of a metaphor; I think they\u2019re just zombies, but by the end I still felt like I\u2019d missed something.<\/p>\n
One part I found especially engaging and hoped would be expanded more was when she described Soap\u2019s painting on 158-159 like a depiction of the story itself, the story of being lost in the woods. No one really knows what the painting is supposed to be or where it came from. Maybe it\u2019s a forest inside of which is a prison, inside of which are these strange characters. But that\u2019s about as far as I got with that interpretation. I like how the narrator calls Soap so many names, the preferred name being an object. Does this count as dehumanization? Sometimes he\u2019s Arthur, or Sweetheart, or\u2026Wolverine? At the end he\u2019s not there at all. So whose story is it?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also curious to know what everyone took from the Cage piece. I was initially skeptical because of the multiple fonts\u2013they seem a little gimmicky and annoying, especially since they don\u2019t really make a pattern and I really want them to. But I enjoyed the story\/poem and how self-aware and contradictory it is right from the beginning, with its hopeful title and hopeless parenthetical title. It\u2019s sometimes like a piece about good intentions gone wrong. Tunnel workers go on strike to make more money or have better conditions, but the government ends up not just not needing them, but actually doing better without them. That\u2019s so sad.<\/p>\n
But back to the fonts: What do you think about them? Are they just there for attention? I don\u2019t get why the form is the way it is, unevenly centered and mashed together, unless maybe the point is to look jagged (which is possible) or maybe there\u2019s no point at all (also possible). What is it that holds everything together here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I agree with Jennifer\u2019s summary of Foer\u2019s story. He attempts to create a symbol-driven handbook for categorizing the depth of emotions arising from, among other things, love and illness. But the complexity of human experience cannot be limited to the characters on a standard keyboard. The approach reminds me of Hassan\u2019s point that \u201cwe no … Continue reading Self-Awareness, Dehumanization<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-2-short-stories","tag-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}