English According To Orwell

Orwell's argument is that today's English is very much like political writing. Political writing is the same, it has some variation between parties but generally it is the same. English is decaying by the uses of words and phrases that lack real meaning and by its incorrect use. Many of this words and clichés have been so overused that they lack the real meaning they were intended to have. According to Orwell: "What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around."

Irony is shown when Orwell ends the paragraph of Operators Or Verbal False Limbs with so on and so forth after criticizing these type of phrases. Another case of irony is when he starts to use political writing after saying it to be a bad way of writing.

Dying Metaphors: Dying Metaphors are worn out metaphors which have lost their initial meaning. These are used to save people the time and trouble of creating a new phrase.

Pretentious Diction: Pretentious Diction are words and phrases in writing that are used to show higher knowledge in the subject. The use of scientific words to show that you are a scientist when you can use normal words is an example.

Meaningless Words: Words that have no real meaning and are overused. These words lack a concrete and clear meaning that can mislead the reader. One example of this is democracy because it doesn't have a concrete meaning it is more a collection of meanings.

1. Use words that have concrete meaning.
   
2. Avoid using already used metaphors.
   
3. Be original.
   
4. Use short words instead of lengthy ones.
   
5. Use common English.
   
6. Cut out unneeded words.
   
7. Use active voice.
   
8. Use phrases and words that are precise.
   
9. Let the meaning choose the word, not the other way around.
   
10. Avoid using foreign words, scientific words and jargons.
    

Leaves Of Grass Ch 11-20: The Essence Of Life

Today while I was getting home from school I managed to experience nature in a different way. Today it rained pretty heavily and I am not the number one fan of rainy days. First, I couldn't go to tennis practice because the courts were wet and secondly, it is not the most beautiful sight of the skies. I know that rain is needed for the crops and plants and maybe it was time for a little rain because there were some warm days before. Whitman says "I am enamour'd of growing out-doors, Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods" (246). I can perfectly agree with him. The outdoors and nature are what life is about. Our relationship with nature and what nature provides us is essential for both our living and survival. I feel at peace when I am able to see a forming of nature that man has not laid hands on it for a long while without thinking about anything. This formation of nature doesn't have to be as massive as a mountain it can even be a river. It can also be a thunderstorm like the one I was able to see today that reminds me that we are still human and that nature has much more power than us and can destroy us in any second. Animals are the other part of nature that Whitman talks about in this quotation. He says he loves the men that live with cattle. I think that Whitman could have said that the simplest men are the happiest because they live among animals. Men who live along cattle can be a form a very basic and simplistic man that doesn't need much to be happy, maybe just nature and that is what Whitman likes about these men.

From the impression I am getting from Whitman I would say he is a person that tries to convince people into his way of life. His way of life would be an all human loving life where he likes every other person because of the kindness of human kind. He would also be very involved in nature probably living in a space where he is away from the city noises and pollution. He likes nature and his ideal way of life is living with it while sharing and protecting it. According to Whitman: "I breathe the air, but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place" (342). Whitman says that he likes nature and uses nature because it is necessary for living but, at the same time says that he doesn't want it all for himself. He is not of the twenty-first century where today there is a constant fight for natural resources. Today we hear that the next great wars will be for water and natural resources but what are we dong to help this stop. When Whitman says that he leaves a lot of air after him he is talking about how he doesn't want to have nature all for himself, he wants nature to spread around the world and people to enjoy nature as he does. In Whitman's time there might have been no fight for the resources but if we were to apply his quotation to today I would see it as the need for the resources and the fight to obtain them.

Leaves Of Grass Poems 1-10: View Of Life

There was once a time when I was young and thought that the world revolved around having fun, that I thought that poems were worthless. I thought that they were a loss of time and that even worse teachers forced us to write poems. I used to write them full of feeling with the things that I liked in my life trying to sound the most emotive as possible. After all those poems that I had to write in a forced way I started to get a certain understanding to what poetry is supposed to mean. Each time I gave the poems a bigger effort and started to realize that it is not just placing all your feeling in a paper because almost anyone can do that, it is about through your feelings making the reader understand a new way of viewing life. I think that that is what separates a true poet from a normal one and it is his ability to communicate his thoughts of the world through his feelings. When I read the poems of Walt Whitman in his book of poems called Leaves Of Grass I saw this expression of his views through his poems. According to Whitman: "You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books" (chapter2). When I read this I really liked the meaning he was trying to get trough. What I could get from this is that he wants people to stop looking at things from outside the real thing. He wants people to be related directly to the thing they are talking about not to be bystanders and look at what happens. I understood it more like a call for action, to stop dreaming so much and get into action to pursue that dream. I actually like this message because it is making the readers find out what kind of person Whitman was during his life time. From this part of his poem I could imagine him doing everything possible within his reach to pursue his dreams instead of dreaming he could have them and taking no action.

While I was reading I became interested in knowing who Walt Whitman was. I then went into Wikipedia and entered Walt Whitman to see more about his life and how it could relate to some of his poems. I saw that in the important events in his life his father died and in that same year he published the first edition of Leaves Of Grass. When I read his poems I also got the feeling that he talked a lot about the soul and death. This could have a big relation to his father's death because the loss of a loved one can really affect the view of life. In chapter five he mentions the soul when he says "I believe in you, my Soul—the other I am must not abase itself to you; And you must not be abased by the other," and the soul is the most essential part of existence. A body without a soul is just a body, but with the soul it is a human being. The soul is really the essence of the person and when he talks about the soul he talks about him as a friend and another person. He may be referring to the soul of his father and that person who was his very close friend. In the other quotation he mentions death. According to Whitman: "And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier" (chapter6). He sees death as a good thing. Death here is described as a thing that normally people do not know. I think the general idea of death for people is that it is bad but, when Whitman says that for his it is not that way he must be meaning that it is something good and luckier as he says. Now that I know more of his background I might be seeing the poems he wrote through different eyes because when such a traumatic event happens in the life of a person it is certain that that person's view of life will change.

A Simple Heart Ch 4, 5: The Shortest Death

Gustave Flaubert is the kind of writer that I would like to have as friend if was going to write a book. He uses different techniques to write that even though his theme of the story might become repetitive and without action he manages to keep you interested in it by the way he writes. He likes to get to the point rather quickly without any unnecessary writing. This help in some way get the reader interested because he know that instead of describing a flower as nature's most beautiful thing where birds stop and humans eyes rest, he will just say a flower. In a part of the story he did something that really got my attention. When he was talking about Felicite he started talking about a driver and what the driver saw. According to Flaubert: "Behind her, in a cloud of dust and impelled by the steep incline, a mail-coach drawn by galloping horses advanced like a whirlwind. When he saw a woman in the middle of the road" (Chapter 4). In this part he manages to confuse the reader and later in the next paragraph he makes everything clear by telling the reader that the woman in the road was Felicite. Another thing that Flaubert does that really impressed me was when he described very important events. In almost all the stories I have read until now the scenes where a fatal injury or a very important thing happens to a character there is a lot of description. There are whole stories that are based on important events like the death of a character. In Flaubert's A Simple Heart I think I have seen the shortest description of death and big losses. One clear example of this is when Flaubert describes Madame Aubain's death by saying "her tongue looked as if it were coated with smoke, and the leeches they applied did not relieve her oppression; and on the ninth evening she died, being just seventy-two years old (Chapter 4). How can the death of one of the main characters in this story be described so simply. Flaubert is describing more her death as if it was not important and making us feel that her life was not as important as it appeared to be. I think this is a new way of describing very important events in the story making it different. I personally do not like it and it wouldn't be my choice when describing something very important but it is a good technique to use if it goes along well with your story.

A Simple Soul Ch 1, 2, And 3: Williams And Flaubert

Writing is a process that involves how each person writes and reacts to different situations. This different way of writing and ideas about different topics make writing be different depending on the person who wrote it. Those differences that people have are eventually their style of writing. The style of any writer is basically how he likes to state his points and how he says things that can be said in many different ways. We have seen in class some short stories of William Carlos Williams and I have seen that he uses similar techniques to write his pieces. The main two things that characterize his writings are his use of the structure of the paragraphs to show something that is being said in the poem and his different uses of punctuation to show the speed and the emotions of his story. In Gustave Flaubert's A Simple Soul I saw things that can be similar or different to Williams' way of writing. Flaubert uses lists to describe the setting of the story and also to show what Felicite had to do. Williams also used list to show the settings but he also used lists to show confusion by describing in very much detail what the features of each setting were. Flaubert doesn't use different punctuations with the intention to show the reader the rhythm in which that paragraph has to be read. Williams in the other hand hardly writes a paragraph where the variation in punctuation is not used to show the rhythm and to show what is happening to the characters in the story. For example Williams did not use a period in a story that was about a chain of blind men falling into a bog in that way the reader reads the story as if he was quickly falling to the end of the story waiting for the point. I think Flaubert in a way does this to his writing by not changing the variation in sentences to show sometimes the boredom in the lives of Felicite and Madame Aubain after Victor, Virginia, and Paul are away from home. Another thing that really caught my attention of Flaubert was that in one chapter he talks about a woman for some part of the chapter without telling us who she is. According to Flaubert : "She would not believe him at first […] To Felicite his cowardice appeared a proof of his love for her, and her devotion to him grew stronger" (Chapter 2). His style keeps in this specific part the reader's attention because he really wants to know who is that person but is not told until later.

There was another thing that Flaubert did in his story that I noticed. He narrates most of the story in third person in except for a few pieces of dialogue. The few pieces of dialogue that are written are said by the different characters but in different ratios. Flaubert's style shows since the beginning that Madame Aubain has certain importance. She is the one that in the first three chapters most talks in dialogue. I see this as the way in which Flaubert shows us the importance and the prestige that each character had in the story. Madame Aubain says in one part "Now, be brave, be brave"
(chapter 3), and talks in dialogue other couple times. Felicite does not talk in dialogue for almost three chapters until in the end of chapter three she has a dialogue. Flaubert with the dialogue usage may have wanted to show the importance of the different characters throughout the story.

 

The Atoms Of Writing

Gary Lutz's lecture had one main target that was explain how words affect writing. I liked how he went from very specific to broad when going from the words to the sentence to the paragraph. The sentence is composed of words that by themselves do not mean anything. The words are the smallest part of writing that has a meaning, almost as if they were the atoms of writing. These words when placed together in a sentence by a writer can have the ability to be a good sentence or not. According to Lutz: "But too often our habitual and hasty breaking away from one sentence to another results in sentences that remain undeveloped parcels of literary real estate, sentences that do not feel fully inhabitated and settled in by language". When a word is not placed by the author in accordance to the other words then the sentence can lose its meaning. I really agreed with this part and I somehow saw this out of sentence sometimes showed in the actions of one friend. If we are all happy and having a good time he has to be angry and trying to make us all have a bad time. When we are all bored and tired he is the one that is full of energy trying to make us happy. In the sentence when the words do not fit together then they may change the meaning. As said by Lutz "And as the words reconstitute themselves and metamorphose, your sentence may begin to make a series of departures from what you may have intended to express", and it is true one word can change the meaning of the whole sentence. I really liked how this lecture managed to incorporate personal experiences of the author and at the same time link it to the topic he is going to discuss.

The Crying Of Lot 49 Chapter 6: Pynchon The Master Of The Labyrinth

The process of a story is in just one conversation where a person tells the other person what happened. The novel is meant to go slower in a more detailed manner while focusing on many other themes. The novel is also divided by chapters which make the reader have some sort of stops. This article is really what Oedipa's life has become. Before Oedipa's life was like a long novel where she did not have anything much to do. It was all monotonous and she almost had no communication with Mucho. Now her life had become a story. Her life was happening at incredible rates where she would drive around California searching for clues that lead to more information about WASTE. She had also met many people and had many strange events. One of these people that she met and helped her in some way to discover more about WASTE was the man from the bar called The Greek Way. At the end he was the only one Oedipa wanted to talk to. Oedipa was somehow wondering if all this clues and trying to solve the mystery was set up by Inverarity. The man from the bar said "It's too late" (pg.146), and when he said that I thought the same Oedipa thought. The question I would have asked then would be too late for what or for whom? He tells her that it was too late for him but did not explain anything more. Pynchon might have done this to leave a lot of room for interpretation to the reader. The reader now has to imagine what he meant. When I read this I thought that it was too late for her to retire of the case. She had gone too deep now in the knowing of the case that dropping now would be more difficult than not dropping. He also creates leaves the story with us really not knowing if all was a joke of Inverarity or it is true. In this way he creates two options but he never tells us which one is done.

A thing I noticed is that in some occasion Pynchon slips in his opinion about a certain subject in the novel. According to Pynchon: "The owner informed her that Zapf, the damn fool, has set fire to his own store for insurance" (pg.122). The first time I read this sentence I did notice that it says damn fool but I did not really care about it. Then when I saw that there was no one talking in this quotation I looked back to see who was talking. When I noticed it was the narrator that said that to the owner of the shop I noticed that Pynchon had some sort of hate for Zapf. We do not know who Zapf is but we know that Pynchon is not very fond of this character. The other thing I noticed that Pynchon included in this quotation was the materialistic thinking of people. How can one set on fire its shop just to get some money? I think that this person did not care how much spiritual value his shop full of books and his work life had. We are sometimes too much driven for power and money that we tend to forget the spiritual side. Pynchon might have included this quotation to show the greed of human kind and how people will do anything for money.