To Serve Man, Part 2

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
                                  --Honoré de Balzac

The Hunger Games: A hugely popular and contemporary example of a story built on the sacrifice of children for the good of the world.

Okay, so hopefully now, after having done a little research, we have some contextual knowledge about the story.  We know a little something about Le Guin, the setting and about the philosopher whose ideas inspired the creation of this story.  But let me review, just to be safe.

Omelas.  Simply print "s-a-l-e-m-o", hold that word up to a mirror, and you'll see "omelas" (though not exactly; the "l" and the "s" will likely be backwards).  "Omelas" is a mirrored reference to Salem, Oregon (Salem, O), Le Guin's home.  Now that's sort of clever, but this is where we need to put on our Analytical Hats and ask the question "why?"  Part of the answer may be pretty simple: it's a place she knew.  But why backwards/mirrored?  Writers commonly refer to cities by their real names, so there was really nothing to stop her from actually referring to Salem.  I would suggest two things are going on here.  

First, the story is a fantasy, so "inventing" the name of a town helps remind us that we are in a fantasy world.  However, finding out what Omelas actually refers to is not exactly difficult, so I think something else is going on here.  By mirroring the name of an actual place, I think she wants us to realize that while this is a fantasy world, she wants us to realize that the behaviors she talks about in this story are a part of our real world.  Maybe not literally, but the best fantasy writers (and Le Guin was and is one of the best) use fantasy not as an escape, but as a way of cautioning us as to what we are or what we might become if we are not careful.  In short, she is talking about you and me, and the world in which we live.  So think about that--we may not lock children in basements as some sort of bizarre sacrifice, but are there other ways in which we have created a "look-the-other-way" society, a society in which we try not to pay much attention to how we manage to get and keep the good things that we have? 

Breaker Boys (Child coal mine workers), early 20th C.  "Breaking" was dangerous work.

As far as William James is concerned (the far more challenging task), James articulated a philosophy known as Pragmatism.  I'll give you the short and sweet version of Pragmatism: basically, if something benefits us, then it is good and true.  We commonly tend to think that there are absolute truths out there, and we should pattern our lives to adhere to those truths.  James is saying the opposite: if we do something that benefits us as a society, then that something is true. Let's say, for example, that a government decides that every citizen must wear a uniform when outside of their homes.  After a while, the government and the citizens discover that this has created a greater sense of community, and has removed the stress of using clothing to signal one's class status, or send hostile messages, or to just separate oneself from the rest of the community.  In short, wearing uniforms has proven beneficial to society as a whole.  Not for every individual--that's impossible--but for society as a whole.  In the scheme of pragmatism, then, because we benefit from wearing uniforms, then wearing uniforms is good and true.  First the action, then the rule, NOT first the rule, then the action. 

Mill Girls, Massachusetts, late 19th C. 

As you might sense from my example above, pragmatism often then is reduced to a simplistic duality: the good of the many vs. the good of the one.  (Though it's not actually quite that simple.) In the world of Pragmatism, often the good of the many outweighs the good of the one--and that's where this story comes in.  Yes, it's horrible that the child has to suffer, but if the result of the suffering of a single person is the happiness of the whole town--the good of the many--including all of the other children in the town, then is that not a fair trade-off?

So let's dig a little deeper and focus on a couple of elements in the story itself.  I'll present you again with a series of questions to which to respond, except that your answers here will pertain directly to the first option in your second assignment you have coming up, and hopefully will be able to help you generate content for that essay by giving multiple, and complicated, things to think about.  (And that's the point--to recognize the complexity of things, that there are no simple answers).  


On With the Show

Here are the tasks/questions I would like you to address for "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."  What I'd like to do is try to get some debate and (respectful) argument going--the kind of argument that's supposed to occur in college (and beyond), and not the name-calling and stubbornness we see all-too-often now.  

Below you’ll find a couple of questions that I’d like you to write your answers to. Keep in mind that if you choose this option for Assignment #1, your answers to these questions can go a long way to generating content for that essay.  What I'm asking you to do here is a common part of the writing process, for writers at all levels: use writing to generate ideas, not just to assemble them. 

Reading and Reaction Questions
 

• Do you think what the town is doing is evil, or are they making a difficult choice to benefit the greater good?  Related to that, we are told that at some point every citizen must visit the child, see what's being done to the child, and participate in abusing the child.  Is this an act of cruelty, or is this a way of making sure that the citizens of Omelas understand where their good life comes from?
• I'm guessing that most/all of you are horrified at the thought of so much suffering being visited upon a person.  Fair enough.  My question is, how much of that horror is based on the fact that it is a child who is suffering?  Would you be as horrified if it were an adult?  And what difference should it make whether it's a child or adult, a sweetheart of a person or an asshole?  Isn't all life supposed to be valuable, period?
• Finally, would you stay, or would you go?  Why?

As I mentioned, I'd like to try to get debate going, so here's how I'd like this to work.  First, write your responses to the questions above.  (And if it helps, keep in mind that what you would be doing is writing a draft of a potential essay.)

Then, I want you to respond to at least one other student, one with an answer that you disagree with.  Explain what you disagree with, and why.  That "why" is important, because that's where analysis lies.  And as I mention above, keep the disagreement respectful. 

2.  

Please respond by Monday, 2/3.

And Away We Go

This is a course about written communication.

"Writing" and "Written Communication" are two different things.  Writing can simply mean putting words on paper or screen, scrawling graffiti on a building, carving one's initials on a tree, or even peeing one's name in snow.  (You get the drift.)  Written communication can also mean all of those things, but with one big difference:  communication occurs when a reader or readers understand and care about what you're saying.  

Effective college writers are able to communicate; they have a sense of who their readers are, what those readers know, what those readers need and want to know, what moves those readers, what will motivate those readers to at least consider what the writer is saying.  If readers don't understand what you're saying, there is no communication.

So once again, this is a course about written communication.  Putting words on paper/screen/snowbank is easy; getting those words to connect with readers is more challenging, and more necessary.

Let's use a simple example. We're sitting at the dinner table, passing the food and having some good conversation, when I look at you at the other end of the table and say "Could you pass the salt, please?"  The chances are quite good, I'd say, that you would pass me the salt.  It was, after all, a simple question, and I used the magic word to boot.

But did I, in fact, ask a question?  Yes, my statement was in the form of a question, but realistically what are the chances that you would say "No"?  Slim--very slim, indeed.  "Could you pass the salt, please?" is a yes-or-no question, but do you really think that "no" is a possible answer?  Even though we ask the question, we typically do not expect--and likely would be shocked--that someone might say "no."  There's really only one option: pass the salt.  So, have I asked you a question?  In reality--no.  What I've done, in fact, is given you a command.  So then why do we ask this as a question?

Because dinner is a social situation that we see as a form of family or community bonding.  Consequently we typically expect certain standards of behavior at the dinner table--including politeness.  So we ask a question about passing the salt to be polite, not because we are genuinely giving the person we're asking a choice.  This is actually a command ("Pass the salt") masking as a question, because the context demands we be polite.  So when you ask the question "Could you please pass the salt" you are reading the audience and adjusting your language for the needs of your audience.  If you were aware of only your own needs and actually ordered someone to pass you the salt, there's a pretty good chance that you'd get some dirty looks, and if you did get the salt, it might be hurled at your head at just under the speed of light.  

 Here's another, more visual example.  Take a look at the ad below.  It's an advertisement soliciting contributions to a children's charity.

The purpose of this particular message is pretty clear: give us money so we can feed this kid.  Of course, asking for money is straightforward; actually getting people to part with their money takes some persuasion. In other words, the advertisers have to communicate with their target audience.  I mean, I could ask all of you to send me twenty bucks, and all of you will likely ask "why?"  I could say "I need it, I'm hungry" and then all of you may say "prove it."  

And that's what we're trying to identify in this image: what's the "proof," what's the evidence that this child needs our help?  What does it appeal to, and how does it make that appeal? Yes, we know that the image is trying to move us emotionally and trying to get us to say "Awww, poor kid, here's a Snickers bar," but how?  How does the image get an emotional reaction out of us?  What physical elements, what concretes of this photograph are intended to affect the reader?  What I'm talking about here is what will become one of the key concepts for our class: analysis.

"Analysis" can be a mucky concept, which is not a lot of fun to deal with, particularly since I can pretty much guarantee you that much of the writing you do in college (and in this class) will be analytical in nature.  However, one of the most common writing tasks you'll be asked to do throughout your college career will be to analyze something.  When I use the phrase "critical reading," that's fundamentally what I mean--read a text analytically.  A surface reading simply tells your reader what a text is about, little more than the most basic information and basic purpose of the person who created the text.  For example, a surface reading of the charity ad would say something like "this is an ad that shows a hungry little girl, asking us to help her get food by sending money to the organization that's sponsoring this ad."  Pretty basic stuff.

A critical, or analytical reading, digs deeper and tries to understand how a creator of a text tries to get his or her audience to respond in a certain way.  My guess is that none of you had much trouble understanding what the ad wanted from you; the big issue, though, is how the ad uses visuals to try to get you to do what the advertiser wants you to do.  Basically, then, we need to start paying attention to details.  One cannot analyze something unless one pays attention to details.  By paying attention and zeroing in on details, we might then be able to notice that something was not quite right with that photograph--that is, in an ad seeking money to help starving children, the photographer chose a child who clearly was not starving.

In college writing, teachers love analysis, and they love details.  One of the most common negative criticisms teachers have for college-level essays is a lack of details, a lack of support, vague generalizations (meaning one is only describing the surface of a text), etc.  Now I don't want to imply that throwing in details just for the sake of throwing in details is a sure-fire formula for success in writing.  There needs to be a reason for details to be in an essay.  One way to think about this is that whenever you add a detail to support something you want to say, you also need to answer the question "So what?" with that detail.  

So using the principles of "How?" and "So What?," let me give you a brief analysis of the ad:

1. The ad to help starving children tries to get us to send money by using a photograph of a starving child to appeal to us emotionally.

2.  How?  Well, for one thing,  the photographer has the child looking up and straight at us.

3.  So what?  By looking up, the photograph puts us in the position of power and authority, as someone who can do something, and by looking straight at us, the child seems to make a personal connection to us.

We can continue to analyze other elements of the ad that clue us in to how the photographer tries to manipulate us.  Notice the big eyes (you might even say "sad eyes"), the empty cup, the dirty (or injured, or "disfigured") face, her positioning against a crumbling wall.  (I've pointed out those things in the illustration below.)  Notice even that she's posed to look up and directly at us, and the empty cup is pointed up and directly at us.  On the surface, it's pretty easy to figure out what the point of the ad is; the significant part for us is pointing to the physical evidence, the proof, to explain how the creator of the ad was accomplishing what he/she was trying to accomplish.

Let me break this down for you visually by pointing to the details, the evidence, that supports the message the advertiser is trying to get across:  

All well and good.  But remember, good analysis begins with paying close attention to details, and if you look at this ad closely enough, you may notice that there is something ... sneaky and not-quite-right about this image.  Yes, this is a powerful emotional appeal, and we can tend to get swept away by our emotions and forget that we're supposed to be rational creatures too.  And this matters for college writing.  If we look at the photograph rationally, suppressing our emotional reactions, we can see some things that are not quite right. Let me break it down for you visually again:


The bright eyes, the healthy-looking face and the adorable hair style: all help create what we would call a cognitive dissonance--basically two contradictory and conflicting ideas co-existing at the same time.  We're supposed to send money to help feed this starving child, but this is a picture of a child who is anything but starving.  You might say this this is supposed to encourage us to help all genuinely starving children, and not this particular child, but then I would ask why choose an image of a clearly un-starving child to do this? 

What's a reader to do?  Well, pretty much what I mentioned above.  Don't accept things at face value. Analyze what you're reading.  And keep in mind it's a process, something that takes time to learn. The more you read, the more you know, and the more you know, the better you're able to analyze.  So it's not something that's going to happen overnight.

Even though we are supposed to believe that this child is hungry and we can feed her, there's ample evidence that the child is anything but hungry, and a closer look at the details reveals that.  And that's the point.  A surface reading doesn't reveal much; a closer reading reveals much more.  In terms of college writing, it's that closer reading that your teachers are going to be looking for. 

Raising the Stakes

Let's get you started on trying an analysis yourself.  (I'll point out too that what I'm going to ask you to do here is similar to one of the options you'll have for your first writing assignment, so you can also view this as practice.)  Below you'll see a 1916 ad for a product called Resinol Soap (which actually still exists) 

Let's start simple, and see if we can generate a list of details (since analysis begins with paying attention to details). As is often the case, the surface message is pretty easy to figure out: the girl with the clear skin wins.  (But what exactly does she win?) However, let's think about how the ad tries to get that message across.  Advertisements are often excellent opportunities to practice analysis, because very little (if anything) you see in an advertisement is there by accident.  Whatever you see, small or large, is likely there on purpose to get a certain reaction from you, without you even necessarily knowing it.  To put it another way, advertisers know what your buttons are, and they know how to push them.

What I'd like you to do is list 5 details you see in the ad.  Look for things that are small and interesting.  Pay attention to both visuals and words. Let me start with an example.  I notice that the scarf the woman on the left is wearing is the same color as the coat on the woman on the right.  The color is also very bold, very attention-getting, so I'm thinking that the advertiser wants to draw our eye to them.  Ah, but why?  Well, if I pay close attention, I might notice that while both are articles of clothing, each article of clothing "sits" differently on each woman.  Hmmm.  Maybe there's something in that....

You can add your list by responding to this post.  (Click on "Respond to Thread.")  I'd like your responses posted by this Thursday (1/16).