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Stuff and Things and the Like
Feb. 23rd, 2011 08:40 pmSo this blog post is going to be about 45 minutes late due to that long, ineffective, and tediously disappointing awards ceremony last night that I know at least two others from this class attended. Can I say how embarrassing it is to realize that an organization comprised exclusively of top scholastic performers at a top U.S. University is unable to organize something as simple as an alphabetical filing of no more than 350 of its new members? GAH! I wanted to run for E-Board just so that I could make next year’s ceremony worthwhile. Not to offend anyone but it was just very frustrating and this is a great place to vent
Anyways, I read the first few chapters of Never Let Me Go the other night and a few today. I have a couple more to finish after this entry, so I’m not quite finished with the assignment yet. I want to spend the first half of my post thinking out loud about the chapters that I have read. It’s interesting to see the development of inter-personal relationships between the children in Kathy’s flashback. I really like how even in a society that seems slightly distant from our own, many of the same problems persist. This is very much the same in BNW as well as WotEoT—in Huxley, people still struggle with prejudice against individuality, and even despite their intense conditioning, they still have slight occasional difficulties conforming to the norm. The same thing appears in the Ishiguro, as can be obviously pointed out through the trials and tribulations of Tommy.
I also find it interesting how the idea of sports never seems to be far away from the act of ostracizing. I have personal experience of being an outsider in a culture driven by sports—Tommy, on the other hand, seems to be the outsider in a culture driven by creativity and artistry. But in both cases—mine and Tommy’s—sports play a pivotal role: Tommy is superior to the others in sports, but is not allowed to play with the other children because they do not like him. I just think it is interesting that even in a world that seems alien to ours, similar themes persist.
For a little bit of my blog I’d also like to discuss Battlestar Galactica. I must admit, I have been obsessively watching Season 1 since having seen the miniseries, because it is so fracking awesome. Anyways, as I watch the title credits, I notice how much I am reminded in the picture of the fleet of spaceships moving slowly through some interstellar cloud of the old pictures of the Trail of Tears. There is an obvious parallel here: one technologically dominant group forcing an entire inferior group out of their home and causing a great deal of them to die along the way—but it is interesting to think that the inferior race in this case, in essence, caused their own destruction. This isn’t quite parallel to the Trail of Tears historical example, but it is interesting nonetheless.
Anyways, yeah.
Anyways, I read the first few chapters of Never Let Me Go the other night and a few today. I have a couple more to finish after this entry, so I’m not quite finished with the assignment yet. I want to spend the first half of my post thinking out loud about the chapters that I have read. It’s interesting to see the development of inter-personal relationships between the children in Kathy’s flashback. I really like how even in a society that seems slightly distant from our own, many of the same problems persist. This is very much the same in BNW as well as WotEoT—in Huxley, people still struggle with prejudice against individuality, and even despite their intense conditioning, they still have slight occasional difficulties conforming to the norm. The same thing appears in the Ishiguro, as can be obviously pointed out through the trials and tribulations of Tommy.
I also find it interesting how the idea of sports never seems to be far away from the act of ostracizing. I have personal experience of being an outsider in a culture driven by sports—Tommy, on the other hand, seems to be the outsider in a culture driven by creativity and artistry. But in both cases—mine and Tommy’s—sports play a pivotal role: Tommy is superior to the others in sports, but is not allowed to play with the other children because they do not like him. I just think it is interesting that even in a world that seems alien to ours, similar themes persist.
For a little bit of my blog I’d also like to discuss Battlestar Galactica. I must admit, I have been obsessively watching Season 1 since having seen the miniseries, because it is so fracking awesome. Anyways, as I watch the title credits, I notice how much I am reminded in the picture of the fleet of spaceships moving slowly through some interstellar cloud of the old pictures of the Trail of Tears. There is an obvious parallel here: one technologically dominant group forcing an entire inferior group out of their home and causing a great deal of them to die along the way—but it is interesting to think that the inferior race in this case, in essence, caused their own destruction. This isn’t quite parallel to the Trail of Tears historical example, but it is interesting nonetheless.
Anyways, yeah.
