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"Conjoined" by Judith Minty

Marriage is often related to happiness and happy-endings. The union between two people who are in love and are finally ready to settle down with each other. However, not every marriage follows through according to this. Judith Minty’s poem, “Conjoined”, demonstrates her view on marriage. She sees marriage as something horrible and gruesome. She portrays her view through using metaphor, simile, and diction.

                Minty utilizes metaphor to demonstrate her view on marriage. For example, in stanza one, she is describing an onion which actually have two onions jointed together and growing “against the other”. She is actually comparing marriage to a deformed onion. Like the onion, two people that joined in matrimony and are trying to growing upon one another. Usually marriages are seemed to be an understanding and commitment between the two to come together and start a life together. They are willing to grow together, not against each other. She is describing marriage to be such a horrible and terrible thing. Furthermore, Minty is describing how the onion is “deformed where it pressed and grew against the other”. She is saying marriage caused the two people trying to adapt to one another but in the end both are deformed and damage. Either one is able to really grow. Marriage is supposed to be full of compromise and growing as a couple not individually against the other. What Minty is saying is actually contradicts against how marriage is suppose to be like. Monsters are not supposed to form out of marriage. There might be up and downs but marriage is all about compromise. Readers are able to understand her view of marriage through this metaphor.

                Minty also use simile to describe marriage. For instance, Minty wrote in stanza two, “An accident, like two-headed calf rooted/In one body, fighting to suck at its mother’s treats”. She illustrates marriage by comparing two calves that share one body. Both of them have a fully functioning mind but control one body together. Both are fight to survive by fighting for their mother’s milk. Like the calves, the companions are like together through marriage, but each have their own view and perceptions of the world and relationship between them. Minty is saying that it is like being stuck together by accident and both have their own opinion of everything. Each one is trying to get their way and being the dominant one in the relationship. They are always fighting for a position or things. Minty influences the readers to see that marriage is a cruel and unusual thing. Furthermore, Minty describes in stanza two lines 7-9, “other freaks, Chang and Eng, twins/Joined at the chest by skin and muscle, doomed/To live, even make love, together for sixty years”. Readers are able to receive an unpleasant feeling from these lines. They can not imagine the picture of being stuck to another person and living with them until death. It makes marriage seem like an impossible relationship between two people. The thought of sharing basically everything with the other person is unimaginable from how Minty describes it. However, it is another thing that marriage is. The two people are willing to come together and share everything that they have with each other. It does not matter what it is because the two have make a commitment to be together until death do them apart. Also because one is part of the other, it is difficult to separate the two.  Minty says that “to sever the muscle could free one/ But might kill the other”. The calves and the Siamese twins are inseparable for they shared one body. If one were to be separate, then the other would die. Just like marriage, if one where to grow and become separate from the other, the marriage would die. Simile allows the readers to see Minty’s view of marriage.       

Minty uses words with strong negative connotation to get her point across to the readers. For example, the words “monster”, “deformed”, “freaks”, and “doomed” give off a negative and unpleasant feel. Through using these words, the readers are able to imagine and feel how she feels towards marriage. Minty wants to show her view of marriage. She feels that marriage is something cruel and horrible. Marriage to her is not a normal and pleasant thing. Her point of view is totally different from the connation of marriage. Her diction allows readers to see how she views marriage. Her tone is negative. She sees marriage as a burden and horrible thing for the two have to grow against each other, fight, and share everything with each other. “Monster”, “deformed”, “freaks”, and “doomed” are words that are usually used to describe those who are not fit and supernatural.

In “Conjoined”, Judith Minty describes her point of view on marriage through metaphor, similes, and diction.  She does not see marriage stereotypically like others. She sees it as a horrible and gruesome relationship two people.    

The Holocaust as a Comic Book Metaphor: Maus II and Art Spiegelman by Timothy Sexton discussed how Spiegelman was able to draw/write the comic book Muas II with representation of the Holocaust through his characterization of the characters not as humans but animals. Sexton wrote, “The key to Spiegelman's success in avoiding charges of trivialization may possibly lie in his artistic choice to treat the Holocaust through metaphor.” Instead of making the characters in Muas II as humans but animals, he was able to avoid the questioning of the audiences if this is actually what happens in the Holocaust itself. Also, the audience are allow to not take the story into believing that it is the actual occurrences of the Holocaust. Sexton supported that “tradition-ally, the use of animal characters in an allegory are intended to draw stark distinctions between character types.” Animals tend to categorize and demonstrate who is who in the storyline. The readers could distinct that the Jews are the mice and the Germans are the cats. Furthermore Sexton states, “Spiegelman manages to take advantage of the filmic component of the comic book while also manipulating its inherent pulp components.” Because of the way how Spiegelman is able to draw the shadows and perspective look, the story itself is like more of a movie than a book with pictures. The audiences are allowed to picture the story continuous throughout their mind as a movie. Moreover, Sexton wrote that throughout many other cartoons, animals seemed to characterize human. For example, Bugs Bunny, himself, seems to be more of a human than an animal. People who not question why and how animals can talk because widely people accept the fact that animals can be humanize. Ever since as long remember, cats and mice were naturally enemies of each other. Sexton states that, “After thousands of hours spent watching Tom chase Jerry and Itchy carry out his sociopathic torture of Scratchy, the idea that cats and mice are actually conscious of their antagonistic relationship often requires a moment of lucidity to reject.” It was seemed natural that the Germans hated the Jews because cats and mice never gotten along. However, Sexton said, “Just as cats aren't really consciously aware of any antagonism toward mice-they are just food-Spiegelman's use of them serves to heighten the idea that maybe many Germans also weren't fully conscious of their own hatred of Jews.”

 Link: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/127349/the_holocaust_as_a_comic_book_metaphor.html?cat=37

Cat's Cradle Response

I think Cat’s Cradle is a very interesting book. Well, our discussion in the Socratic circle allowed me to really understand what Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Cat’s Cradle, is about and how it relate to postmodernism. Postmodernists rejected modernist’s ideals of rationality and a central point. They tend to focus on abstract and individualism. For example, in chapter 76 when Julian Castle questioned Newt’s painting, Newt answered, “It means whatever it means” (165). The painting Newt drew takes on different meaning through the view of people. His painting is abstract. It does not have a central meaning or a focus object. It all depends on the person to see and comprehend what the painting means to them. Furthermore, when Angela played the clarinet, John “did not expect the depth, the violence, and the almost intolerable beauty of the disease” (180). The only way for Angela to express her real feelings was through her clarinet. Unlike modern, the music that Angela played can be interpreted into different ways. She did not have to play a depressing song to allow her emotion to show.   It is her way of being unique and abstract. In addition, Newt explained to John that “no wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of X’s between someone’s hands, and little kids look  and look and look at all those X’s…” and they find no cat nor cradle (165). No matter how hard someone looks at a cat’s cradle none of both can not be found. The X’s does not seem to form some kind of picture. It is up to the observer to interpret the cat’s cradle into his understanding. Whatever he sees and wishes to understand from it is all up to him. Like the cat’s cradle, life is something is endless and does not have a define meaning to it. Therefore, people search for other meanings that will give them reasons to what life is and more understanding of the world. Bokononism allowed the people to find the purpose of life.  

Brave New World?

After reading Brave New World, there were different topics that I could discuss about. However, I am going to focus on how the novel itself applies to our world. I want to explain the parallels between our world and Brave New World through evidences from Frederick Winslow Taylor’s The Principles of SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 1910 and Sir Ken Robinson's YouTube video, RSA Animate-Changing Education Paradigms.

Frederick Winslow Taylor’s The Principles of SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 1910 discusses of how to improve the industrial efficiency through four of his principles: 1. They develop a science for each element of a man’s work, which replaces the old rule- of-thumb method. 2. They scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the workman, whereas in the past he chose his own work and trained himself as best he could. This is a method which is used by the people in the novel. They created and trained people to a certain position for a certain job in society. In our own world, we are heading toward that kind if method. People are train to do certain things. For example, students are forced to become educated or else they will suffer in the future. Education is the one of the key to be successful like others. 3. They heartily cooperate with the men so as to insure all of the work being done in accordance with the principles of the science which has been developed. The people in the novel were allowed to do whatever they want, which allow them happily to do their part in society, to keep the wheel moving.  Like in reality, if the managers listen to their employees, then the employees ae willing to work better and efficiently. 4. There is an almost equal division of the work and the responsibility between the management and the workmen. The management takes over all work for which they are better fitted than the workmen, while in the past almost all of the work and the greater part of the responsibility were thrown upon the men.

Like how I explained in my blog about Ken Robinson's YouTube video, RSA Animate-Changing Education Paradigms, there are many things that are parallel between our world and Brave New World. For example, the way how the children “conditioned”, we, as students, are being train and function a certain way. Also the way how there are children are created and replacing the old ones in the novel. Students are graduating and going out into the world replacing the elders and “turning the wheel”.     

First of all, the video was very interesting and creative. I thought it was awesome how Sir Ken Robinson drew out the pictures to describing his sayings. The pictures actually help me understand the topic of the video better because I am a visual person. There were some similarities between Sir Ken Robinson’s video, RSA Animate-Changing Education Paradigms, and Brave New World. For example, in the video, Robinson drew at student being medicated and sitting in his desk; while the teacher said, “Take your pills and focus!” (4:52). The student is being drug in order for him to concentrate on education, instead of being distracted by others things such as iPod, T.V. advertising, and computers. The pill helps control and brainwash the students into focusing on the “boring things”.  Similar to this, in Brave New World, the people gather together and take a drug called soma (81). This drug help take the people into a higher dimension mentally, forgetting the physical world. They want to achieve happiness and worship the Fordship. Soma seems like a technique used to help control the people. Furthermore, in the video, Robinson drew each department of the school (6:54). Students go to school and have different kind of classes that they take. Each class taught a different subject; therefore, as students attend, they are being taught and learning varies of things. Just like this, in the novel, from developing in a tube to little children, they are condition through the process. They are taught to hate the cold and love the heat. They are brainwashed that family and relationships are bad things. In addition, Robinson states that students are being produces as batches through age. In the novel, Bokanovsky‘s Process was the production of thousands of twins. They graduate in groups and work on the same thing as groups. 

Brave New World: Chapter "Peb"

Mustapha Mond said, "Wheels must turn steadily, but can not turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as sturdy as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment." I believe that he means that the machines cannot function without the tending of the humans. Without humans, the wheel would not even turn and just lay there. Humans are created to turn and maintain the machine. However, it cannot be any man who is created, it must be a man that follow and do what he is told. He should and like what they are doing and do not question what he are doing. Another way of looking at this is that the wheel is the circle of life, in order for life to proceed, humans control in a certain way. They can only live to a certain age, do certain things, and have certain abilities. If humans are not control then the humans can died out. In order to accomplish this method, the human experiences are manipulated to control the desired outcome, such as family and monogamy. For example, Mustapha Mond said, “…Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group! Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children (her children)…” (37). He manipulated others to believe that families were such horrible relationships. The bonds between families are weird and crazy things to have. By manipulating others to believe this, they do not want people to desired bond with each other. A mother’s love is view as something scary and dirty. By destroying the bonds, it is easier to made people listen and obey. Furthermore, as Henry Foster said to the Assistant Predestinator and Fanny said to Lenina that “every one belongs to every one else” (47). They all believe that no one owns the other. Every one is sharing every one. Unlike our view of being married to only one person, their view is that every one is married to every one. There is not a personal bond that can develop within two people. They are going from one partner to another quickly. It seems that they are trying to destroy bonds. Bonds can affect the development of emotions in humans. Emotions can lead to rebellions in the humans. The people want to create certain kind of people to do certain jobs. For this to happen, emotions must be controlled.