Shine Lived Through The Unthinkable

            This article was very deep and therefore, I found it quite hard to read.  It’s really heartbreaking to even think that people have had lives like Shin’s. This article made me think of two things. The first is that if you’ve seen too many bad things then you slowly loose your emotions and change as a person. The second was very interesting because it kept me thinking about the same question, would a life like this be my dystopia?

From the moment you start reading the article you can tell that this is going to be a tragic and depressing story. When he explains that his mother and brother were brought out and killed, I suddenly got an image of my mom and sister being up there. As hard as it is to write that is what I pictured and even though it was completely fictional I felt extremely sad for a split second. I found it very peculiar that if I can react that way based on an imagination, then how can Shin not cry when it actually happened. Shin said, “My father was weeping, but I didn’t cry. I had no love for her. Even today I hate her for what I had to go through because of her.” This is imperative to the story because not one of us can relate to it. One must be crazy to hate one’s own mother, we are built in such a way that in one way or another we do love our parents. Moreover, when he said I didn’t cry, that was one of the most shocking sentences I read. Witnessing somebody getting hanged and shot in front of must be life scaring especially, if it’s your mother and brother! Shin was surrounded by so much pain and violence that I believe he lost all his emotions. People say that if you’ve been in a war or been in prison for too long it changes you. If that’s true then surely living under Shin’s conditions must completely destroy your emotions.

            While reading about Camp Number 14 you feel as though you are being a told a scary and fictional story. The reason one feels this way is because the living conditions are so dreadful that it’s simply too hard to believe. This is definitely going to be a dystopia for a lot of people. I for one would have never been able to survive if I was treated like Shine. In the article Shine says, “I got to visit my mother only once or twice a year. I never saw my whole family together. I don’t think I saw my brother more than a few times.” Even the thought of going through what he just told us frightens me; at 11 I couldn’t spend more than 2 weeks without my mom. The thing that saddens me the most is when he said that he has never seen his entire family together, the definition of a family is parents and children living together in a household. According to that Shin has never seen a family and therefore, never experienced the joy that comes with it. Towards the end of the article it says, “He has recurring nightmare about being back in Camp No. 14. Awake, he wonders what happened to his father…” Again, these passages are so strong, particularly if you decide to put yourself in his shoes. One can only imagine how horrible a place must be in order to get recurring nightmares years after you’ve left it. It’s amazing that he’s able to live his life and at the same time ask himself, ‘what happened to my father?’

It’s unthinkable that somebody has actually experienced these things and lived under such frightful conditions. Reading this article made me feel miserable, and the worst part is that it never seems to end. If I would have been in Shine’s position I would have killed myself long ago because the truth is, there is no way death could be worse than the life he was living.

Sorry, There Is No Objective Truth...

Despite having been utterly killed and humiliated in class, I believe I have a pretty good idea of what makes an objective truth. It’s nothing! In my opinion there is no such thing as an objective truth, although we are not many students in HL not one of us was told that our truth was completely objective. No matter how well thought out something may be, everything can arise questions (the cover of Entourage is proof of that).

All it takes is one person to make an objective truth subjective. It doesn’t matter who that person is, but if they disagree with your truth and have some kind of evidence then by definition it is no longer an objective truth. There is no way to know whether anything in the world is an objective truth. We may have accepted something as people, a universal truth, but it doesn’t mean that it is an objective truth.  A universal truth simply signifies the best opinion or answer that someone has presented. For example, for thousands of years it was a universal truth that the earth was flat; however, then somebody came up with a more ‘provable’ idea and that became the new universal truth. The fact is that both of them were universal truths but as shown in the example in doesn’t mean that it is an objective truth. For all we know in 300 years or so mankind will find out that the world is in fact a different shape. We cannot come up with an objective truth because there aren’t any. However, that doesn’t mean that all ideas are equally subjective.

A universal truth is formed when the majority of the people on earth agree with a statement. As seen in class, no one had an objective truth, but some people did have better statements than others. I unfortunately was on the wrong end. Moreover, the amount of evidence you have while presenting your argument determines how subjective your truth is. Some people spend their entire life on research in order to prove that their statement works; their goal is to get as many as they can to agree with their statement. This may be confusing, but because there is no objective truth the world functions and competition exists. Even though there is no objective truth, the goal is to make your statement as objective as it can be. Once, you have achieved that then people live by the notion that your statements is as close to the truth as they can get. So, because there is no objective truth, you should always try and prove somebody else’s theory wrong in the hope that somebody will start looking for answers. If enough people question a truth then eventually somebody will come up with a better one.

Objectives truths don’t exist, and it’s for the better. It allows improvement in ideas and propels people to question everything. 

Anything Can Be Criticized

Writing may be one of the hardest things to do. Especially, because every piece of writing can always be criticized which makes it hard to come up with a speech that everyone will like. In class we were given four speeches; our job was to rewrite each one of them. Two were rewritten while following George Orwell’s rules and the other two were rewritten while doing the opposite.

            The first two required us to shorten down the speeches and take away any unnecessary words. It was surprising to see that these famous people used sentences and words that were completely useless. The only reasons they used them was to make the speech sound smart and long. The funny part is that most of the time it works.  There was a staggering amount of unneeded information in each speech, as each speech must’ve lasted 5-10 minutes when in fact I could have been completed in 2-3 minutes. Even in that time frame they would have covered the same amount of information, but it would have contained less unnecessary sentences and words.

            The other speeches were right to the point and well written, but our job was to pack them with more words and sentences. It was actually quite mean, as we were taking a perfectly good speeches and ruining them by adding more words. But that is why writing is so hard; no matter what you do people always have criticism. For instance, in these two speeches people would’ve accused them of not having enough strong vocabulary words. Their belief is that by adding more strong vocabulary words it would make the speech sound ‘better’ and ‘smarter’. The fact is that once we did add all those strong vocabulary words, it made the speeches confusing and took away all their essence.  Even though this exercise made the speeches’ bad it was much easier than the other one. Moreover, there are a million ways to say the same thing and a synonym can be found for almost every single word. This makes our job much easier we just added a bunch of synonyms and made singular sentences into numerous one’s. We made the speech have fine vocabulary words, but we took away its meaning.

            Every piece of writing no matter whom it’s from has flaws. In order to become better speech writers or writers in general for that matter, we have to use the method that portrays our writing the best. If the goal is be in front of an audience and be there for 1 hour then it may be understandable to  fill your paper with multiple sentences and words who’s goal is to reveal the same opinion. However, when we are just trying to get a point across, then it may be more suitable to just get straight to it and skip unnecessary sentences. Critics will always be there to bother you, but if you want to be a great author then they shouldn’t matter; you should just do what’s best for you. In fact, you are your best critic.

We must take better care of the English Language

George Orwell portrays great points to show us what is going wrong with the English Language.  When he is explaining what’s wrong with it, as a student you feel responsible. It’s an interesting thought because we are never told by teachers to use longer and stronger words, but we deem it necessary to do so anyways.  Our misuse of words, phrases, and the lack of expressing our thoughts are slowly killing the English language.

            Firstly, students and kids misuse words all the time; whether it’s using words we don’t know or shortening their spelling. Nowadays, kids learn how to operate a computer by the age of 7 or 8. Although kids are portrayed as energetic and hyper when it comes to typing we are the complete opposite. When I’m chatting online with someone I tend to shorten words like: thx, 2morw, u (you), y (why), r (are), ttyl (talk to you later), and many more. Orwell says, “Written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided, if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.”  He’s completely right, these bad habits can be avoided; all we have to do is type a couple of extra letters and slowly we’ll get rid of the habit. Furthermore, students make another huge mistake; they use words they don’t know. While constructing sentences we have this urge to make them seem smarter, and so we right-click on our mouse and replace a word with one we do not truly understand. This makes the sentence confusing and it also does the opposite of what we want; it doesn’t sound smart, it sounds like you don’t know what you are talking about. Moreover, we also use very drastic words when they are not appropriate. Orwell says that words like phenomenon, liquidate, and utilize are, “Used to dress up simple statements.” These words shouldn’t fit in our daily vocabulary. For example, you can’t say, “I got an F! The problems I am going to have at home will be of gigantic proportions,” because anything that is of gigantic proportions doesn’t happen frequently and it represents something that would affect a great deal of people. Orwell also establishes another problem with these words, “ The words freedom, patriotic, realistic, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.” He’s right, we cannot say stuff like, “I love my country; I’m a patriot!” The fact is we don’t know what makes a patriot; one cannot just claim to love one’s country and become a patriot.

            Secondly, we constantly use phrases just because they seem to flow well or because it is common. The fact is that by doing so, we get rid of what makes us unique writers. Orwell  states, “…  there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.” Whenever we hear something that sounds good and flows well we tend to use it in our writing. What we forget is that we didn’t come up with those words, we just found a place to put them in. By using other people’s words and sentences we are making a collage instead of inventing unique sentences and ideas. Additionally, metaphors are also constantly misused. Much like phrases when one writes an essay one uses pre-made metaphors instead of creating them. In order to show us how metaphors are being misused Orwell even provides us with an example, “THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer.” These mistakes would stop occurring if one took the time to comprehend what one is writing.

            Lastly, often times when we get to a controversial subject we tend to express our thoughts in different ways than what we actually believe. In order to sound more ‘politically correct’ we modify our thoughts and present our arguments with a bunch of lies attached to it. We feel as though by saying something to direct like, “I believe that it was good thing when the U.S dropped the nuke on Hiroshima,” we are bad people. The fact is, we are not. We are simply expressing our opinions. Orwell says, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” If we compromise with our language too much we may end up believing our own lie. Modifying our language takes away our opinions. Orwell agrees with this fact when he says, “Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of then atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.” One shouldn’t disregard their opinion simply because it may sound ‘politically incorrect’; this is why it’s called an opinion, it’s what you believe and no one should have an affect on that.

            The English language faces many problems, but they are all extinguishable. If we work on our writing and understand what we are writing then these mistakes should be gone automatically. It is only logical that when one writes a paper one is meant to know the meaning of what they are writing. While writing, we have to stop using shortcuts and start being original. If this happens then the English language will get its elegance back!  

The Escape From Reality

The article lays out a great deal of topics, but what we desire to know is what makes us so connected to a novel? Throughout the reading we are told what components are necessary in order for a novel to be created. When one gets attached to a novel one cannot do anything but think about it all the time. Reading allows us to break-free from our lives and read about somebody else’s whether it’s better or worse than ours. As mentioned in the reading it allows us to feel a bond with somebody else, whether they are fictional or not is irrelevant.

            While reading a novel we allow our minds to wander and think of what life may be like in the novel; it presents us with the opportunity to step into somebody else’s shoes and see the world from an alternate perspective. The article says, “… it exists not as words written in books but as images with feelings attached.” When we remember what a book was about we remember how it made us feel and how we imagined the characters in it. It most certainly is not a memory of specific words or lines. It’s staggering how much we can feel attached to a book, it can make us feel levels of happiness which is indescribable in words. A novel is so powerful that it can put you in any possible mood depending on the last line you read.

Take the Harry Potter books for example; I was glued to the pages of the book and absolutely distraught when the book ended. I could only imagine what it would be like to live in a place in Hogwarts and even when I wasn’t reading the book all I could do was create images of how the characters and places looked. A good author like J.K. Rowling knows exactly how to grasp the reader’s attention and drive them into a world from which no one would desire to leave. It says, “… It can be enjoyable and correctly read just to see what happens next and to enjoy the company of the author, the narrator, and the characters.” This is what the best authors in the world do! They exercise their talent to create a novel, which becomes your friend. You pick it up because you want to know what’s happening to the characters and if something bad were to happen you feel sorrow. You feel these emotions because you have a bond with the characters in the book. Moreover, another thing that drives people to be attached to fictional characters is their similarity to themselves. The article says, “It enables a reader to relax with a novel as with another person, and also to feel as though the novelist might have something to say in relevance to the reader’s own common life.” When we read about a character we always find similarities between him/her and us. Whether it’s being annoyed with your sister, having no parents, or being frustrated with school. We relate to that character and look for what the author is trying to tell us. What’s so amazing about this is that every character is different but every one of them will have something in common with you, no matter how big or small.

Another very interesting opinion is that every section and chapter is unique which is why one is supposed to read them differently. Each chapter has a different goal from the other. For example, in a paragraph where an author is describing a house, the readers must read slowly and imagine what that house would look like. By reading slowly you pay attention to the small details and it makes you’re image of the house more precise. However, if one were to read a chase scene then it’s meant to be read fast and impatiently. By doing so, we feel the same excitement and suspense as the characters who are in the book. This brings up another great point; it shows the correlation between the reader and the author. Surely, when a good author writes a chase scene he or she does not ponder upon every word and come up with a sentence after 1 hour. When writing a chase scene the author is just as exited as the reader, which is why it is probably written fast and full of suspense. Of course the author will go back and re-phrase his sentences.

Connections, thrills, and imaginations are the reasons for why we get so attached to books. A book can take us away from our boring lives and take us to any place we covet. There are so many varieties of great authors that you can choose exactly where you want to go. Whether it’s in a scary jungle with zombies, or up in heaven, or in a magical place. The options are limitless! Thank goodness for books, our escape to wherever we want.