Looking Through the Feminist's Eye

     I plan on writing about Things Fall Apart through the feminist lens rather than the postcolonial view because the postcolonial view makes too much sense and is too obvious in my opinion.
     On to the point, I will focus a lot of my essay on the problems that the women face in the novel. Obviously the problems with Okonkwo and his wives will be a large part of it, but also the fact that the women are considered property will be  prominent in the essay. Women in the Ibo culture are definitely viewed as subservient to men but also subservient individuals for the most part. Furthermore, the characterization of        Okonkwo is based off of an antithesis of femininity. I will use the examples where Okonkwo is trying to build himself as a man contrary to his father, Okonkwo thinks that every characteristic that his father embodies is feminine.
     Napoleon Bonaparte also shares a similar view of women as Okonkwo and many of the Ibo Culture with his quote from the Feminism article, "Nature intended women to be our slaves...They are our property...What a mad idea to demand equality for women." The article also discusses the fact that the identity of women is constructed by the  men in the Ibo society. Likewise in our society today the image and identity of women is largely constructed by the men in the world rather than the women. I would like to address this contemporary issue in my essay as it parallels to the novel.

The Singularity and its Complications

     I think that the singularity will eventually happen but I also think that Kurzweil is off on his timing. Because of the immense challenge of the biological limiting factors of the merging humans with technology I think it will require more time. One of the speakers in the movie The Transcendent Man, a biologist, says that Kurzweil's theories are possible but they are at an unrealistic timing. He says that from a biological point of view the singularity that Kurzweil depicts is impossible in his time frame. Kurzweil of course disagrees with his critics say according to Kurzweil, "Kurzweil is underestimating the complexity of reverse-engineering of the human brain or the complexity of biology." Kurzweil says, "I don't think I'm underestimating the challenge I think they are underestimating the power of exponential growth." I agree with Kurzweil in the sense that exponential growth can be staggering when analyzed but also one must take into account that these biologists do what they do for a living and they understand the field much more than Kurzweil does. Therefore you must account for their analysis of what's to come.
     Now it seems to me that the most difficult thing to grasp conceptually is the notion that we will eventually merge with machines to become immortal. Maybe it's because my whole life and everyone else who has lived before me has known that death is a definite phenomena and that nobody can escape it. Now Kurzweil says that in 35 years we will become immortal and cyborgs and that we will never age and only choose to die if we want to. This is hard to believe but Kurzweil explains why we can't believe it by saying that our brains are hard-wired to think linearly.
     The most challenging question that I was faced with was what is humanity? What does it mean, essentially, to be human. When I watched The Transcendent Man with my friends we talked about it for about an hour and the most persistent point was the criteria, if you will, for being human. Some said that your thoughts, experiences and reactions to certain situations was what made you human. Then with that definition of humanity you can say that your body has nothing to do with your humanity. In other words if you transplanted your brain into another vessel and you retained all of your consciousness and thoughts and cognitive properties that you had before this hypothetical transplant then you would still be "you." If that is true then why wouldn't everybody just upload their consciousness onto some global network and live connected and intertwined with everyone on the planet through the internet or some other uninvented mechanism? Well some might say you would lose your humanity; but what does that actually mean? During this discussion among friends I brought up a point that further complicated the conversation. Emotions. Wouldn't emotions be another part of your humanity? Isn't that what defines your personality? Well if thats true then when you fully merged with technology that would eventually become so much more intelligent than you, the technology would deem emotions unstable and inefficient and eliminate them. Now imagine yourself without emotions and no empathy for anything living forever in a technological oblivion. Sounds wonderful doesn't it?
     This  directly relates to Brave New World in the fact that the society in Brave New World bent on progress and efficiency. At the singularity  these robots or technological mechanisms will attempt to do the same with humans. They will attempt to make humans the most efficient race possible at literally any cost. Bernard thinks that in Brave New World the citizens are losing their authenticity of humanity. This ties directly into the argument I just made about the criteria for being human. One could say that Bernard is being romantic in his thinking about human existence, but who can say that he is wrong? The article says that us humans cannot think and comprehend the singularity because our brains think linearly. So until the so-called singularity actually occurs nobody can really know the implications of the singularity, therefore nobody can prove or disprove anything at this point.

Thoughts on The Lord of the Rings

Kathleen E. Giligan, in her piece about the temptations of the one ring in The Lord of the Rings is trying to convince her audience that The Lord of the Rings has parallels to Christianity. The audience that she is trying to reach would most likely be people that are familiar with The Lord of the Rings. However she writes the piece in a way that makes sense even if you have never even heard of the series. 

     For example, when she first introduces the subject she explains what the subject actually is. She introduces The Lord of the Rings by going through the history of the bbok and what its preludes were etc. This gives the audience a chance (given they haven't already heard of the series) to understand and learn some of the background behind the text that she gets most of her information from and not to mention what her main argument is about. 

     Evidence is extremely important in this piece. In fact she uses great evidence in almost every claim that she makes. For example when she talks about Galadriel and the temptations that she faces when the ring is presented to her she makes a reference to the greek translation of test the term she used referring to Frodo presenting her the ring. This reference to the greek translation which is a common technique used in Christian sermons gives the feel of a valid point. As a reader when you see this, you are most likely more inclined to believe in the validity of the statement or point that the author is trying to make.

     The author begins the introduction by explaining what The Lord of the Rings  is actually about and it also gives some history about the book and the author themselves. Then the writing goes on to discuss how one can actually analyze The Lord of the Rings in the way the she (the author) is analyzing it. She goes on to explain how Tolkien allows his personal life to influence his writings and she uses that as a proving point for her main thesis. The piece goes on in a way that seems to kind of evolve. At first she talks about the history of the book and the history of the author and how that ties in to what the author is trying to say but then it becomes more and more detailed. The examples begin to use specific names and comparisons between the actual characters in the novel to Jesus Christ himself. This not only helps validate the authors point but also helps the reader not get lost in the complexities of the two literary works. Her transitions are at some points rocky like the transition from the parallel between Smeagol and Deagol and Cain and Abel to Gandalf. It kind of goes from Smeagol and Deagol and then suddenly Gandalf is in the picture and some people might not even know who he is. But her transitions also work very well in other areas specifically in the beginning of the piece when she is talking about analyzing The Lord of the Rings as a religious reading to what The Lord of the Rings is actually about.

      The authors' diction in this piece is rather easy to understand. It does not write to impress with multiple polysyllabic phrases and words, but it rather uses more of a vernacular diction. 

     Regarding the question: "Does the piece confound your expectations in any way?" My answer would have to be no. I am quite familiar with The Lord of the Rings and I have actually thought of the series as a religious reading. But as for the question about the rules that I have been old over the years, I don't think this really violates any of these rules. But I say this only because I had A.P. Comp last year and we had no rules. I am sure that if there was just a direct crossover form Honors English 10 and A.P. Lit. then this paper would have a multitude of mistakes regarding sentence structure, paragraph outlining and other things that have no significant relation to literature or the piece itself.