When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but findingonly the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
Does text complexity include more than complicated vocabulary and longer sentences? Even though written for young adults, The Hunger Games challenges young readers’ analytical abilities with relatively simple language, like its first paragraph.
Beginning with a tactile image, “cold,” Katniss, the narrator, starts to set mood and general foreshadowing. She personifies her “fingers stretch[ing] out,” suggesting later conflicts between impulse and will, conflicts to be dramatically displayed in the Games themselves. Her second tactile image, “rough canvas,” not only continues to evoke the reader’s senses negatively but reinforces the antithesis between loving warmth and cold emptiness. The physical reality Katniss creates is bad enough, but she now infers that Prim must have had “bad dreams.” Furthermore, it’s situationally ironic that Prim would seek support from her mother. The reader eventually finds out that Katniss believes she is incapable of providing it. Katniss may understand this irony if her next words, “of course, she did,” are understood as sarcasm. She now juxtaposes the connotatively positive “reaping” with all the negatives she has established, effectively holding readers in suspense. Finally, Katniss’s first person limited perspective creates situations where a reader must decide if her perceptions are reliably true or not, and this first paragraph can be one of these situations.
It’s reasonable to assume that authors take special care in writing their first paragraphs. This is so because these paragraphs are in a position to begin setting up a novel’s major narrative elements, character and theme chief among them. This kind of care requires complexity, and in the first paragraph of her novel, Suzanne Collins provides an example.
Not long ago a journalist asked me what freedoms we take for granted in America. Now, I spend most of my time sounding the alarm about the freedoms we’re losing. But this was a good opportunity to step back and consider how America is different from much of world history — and why immigrants still flock here.
If we ask how life in the United States is different from life in most of the history of the world — and still different from much of the world — a few key elements come to mind.
Rule of law. Perhaps the greatest achievement in history is the subordination of power to law. That is, in modern America we have created structures that limit and control the arbitrary power of government. No longer can one man — a king, a priest, a communist party boss — take another person’s life or property at the ruler’s whim. Citizens can go about their business, generally confident that they won’t be dragged off the streets to disappear forever, and confident that their hard-earned property won’t be confiscated without warning. We may take the rule of law for granted, but immigrants from China, Haiti, Syria, and other parts of the world know how rare it is. | full text
Asymmetry seems to contradict established ideas about the world. Western civilization as inherited from the ancient Greeks
is driven by the belief that reality is symmetric, that it consists of two irreducible aspects: mind/soul, mind/matter, good/evil, or in some modern examples, particle/wave and software/hardware. Many Oriental philosophies imply symmetry by teaching that balance between Yin and Yang should be the goal of life.
Asymmetry asserts itself in important ways though. From philosophy, Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) believed human history to be asymmetrical and not cyclical. It moves inexorably from thesis to antithesis to synthesis which then becomes a new thesis. This process implies that history moves in one direction, culminating in what Hegel calls the Absolute but does not define.
From science, many physicists believe that asymmetry is a fundamental reality of the physical world. For example, time moves asymmetrically, in one direction only. Also, the second law of thermodynamics states that heat will never flow naturally from a colder to a warmer body but only from a warmer to a colder. Then there’s the apparent imbalance of matter over dark matter in the universe. There is no evidence, however, for any “supersymmetry.”
From the arts, much of Mozart’s music is based on apparent asymmetrical organization and phrasing. For example, musicians like Leonard Bernstein believe that Symphony # 40 largely relies on it for overall effect. Too much symmetry would detract; it’s the asymmetry that “makes it art” (Bernstein 105).
Even in popular culture, asymmetry has an important role. In the area of sports, many major league baseball stadiums, like Fenway Park in Boston, derive their charm from the asymmetrical way they and their playing fields are laid out. Its left field wall is the famous “Green Monster.”
Bernstein, Leonard. The UnansweredQuestion: Six Talks at Harvard. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 1976.
Sometimes it’s what we don’t say that determines much of our lives.
1. 10th Grade
As I sat there in English class, I stared at the girl next to me.
She was my so called “best friend.” I stared at her long, silky
hair, and wished she were mine. But she didn’t notice me like
that, and I knew it. After class, she walked up to me and asked
me for the notes she had missed the day before, and I handed
them to her. She said “thanks” and gave me a kiss on the
cheek. I wanted to tell her, I want her to know, that I don’t
want to be just friends. I love her, but I’m just too shy, and I
don’t know why.
2. 11th Grade
The phone rang. On the other end, it was her. She was in tears,
mumbling on and on about how her love had broken her heart.
She asked me to come over because she didn’t want to be
alone, so I did. As I sat next to her on the sofa, I stared at her
soft eyes, wishing she were mine. After two hours, one Drew
Barrymore movie, and three bags of chips, she decided to go
to sleep. She looked at me, said “thanks,” and gave me a kiss
on the cheek. I want to tell her, I want her to know, that I don’t
want to be just friends. I love her, but I’m just too shy, and I
don’t know why.
3. Senior Year
The day before prom she walked to my locker. My date is
sick” she said; he’s not going to go. Well, I didn’t have a date,
and in 7th grade, we made a promise that if neither of us had
dates, we would go together just as “best friends.” So we did.
Prom night, after everything was over, I was standing at her
front door step. I stared at her as she smiled at me and stared at
me with her crystal eyes. I want her to be mine, but she doesn’t
think of me like that, and I know it. Then she said “I had the
best time. Thanks!” and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I want to
tell her, I want her to know, that I don’t want to be just friends.
I love her, but I’m just too shy, and I don’t know why.
4. Graduation Day
A day passed, then a week, then a month. Before I could blink,
it was graduation day. I watched as her perfect body floated
like an angel up on stage to get her diploma. I wanted her to be
mine, but she didn’t notice me like that, and I knew it. Before
everyone went home, she came to me in her smock and hat
and cried as I hugged her. Then she lifted her head from my
shoulder and said, “You’re my best friend. Thanks” and gave
me a kiss on the cheek. I want to tell her, I want her to know,
that I don’t want to be just friends. I love her, but I’m just too
shy, and I don’t know why.
5. A Few Years Later
Now I sit in the pews of the church. That girl is getting
married now. I watched her say “I do” and drive off to her new
life, married to another man. I wanted her to be mine, but she
didn’t see me like that, and I knew it. But before she drove
away, she came to me and said “You came!” She said “thanks”
and kissed me on the cheek. I want to tell her, I want her to
know, that I don’t want to be just friends. I love her, but I’m
just too shy, and I don’t know why.
6. Funeral
Years passed. I looked down at the coffin of a girl who used to
be my “best friend.” At the service, they read a diary entry she
had written in her high school years. This is what it read: I stare
at him wishing he were mine, but he doesn’t notice me like that,
and I know it. I want to tell him, I want him to know, that I
don’t want to be just friends. I love him, but I’m just too shy,
and I don’t know why. I wish he would tell me he loved me!”
“I wish I did too” I thought to myself, and I cried.
Lok discovered “Like.” He had used likeness all his life without being aware of it. Fungi on a tree were ears, the word was the same but acquired a distinction by circumstances that could never apply to the sensitive things on the side of his head. Now, in a convulsion of the understanding Lok found himself using likeness as a tool as surely as ever he had used a stone to hack at sticks or meat. Likeness could grasp the white-faced hunters with a hand, could put them into the world where they were thinkable and not a random and unrelated irruption.
Imagined by William Golding The Inheritors (1963)
(emphasis not in original text)
When a written or verbal message is ambiguous, it means that it can have more than one meaning and that it’s unclear which one is intended. Ambiguity is not good if the objective is to inform or explain.
With poetry, though, the objective is often different because many poets want mainly to enrich our experience of life and the world. This is why some of the greatest poems are not only ambiguous but actually rely on ambiguity for their overall effect.
Einstein’s famous formula for translating mass into energy (E=mc2) says that mass and energy are equivalent, implying that a small amount of mass is equivalent to an enormous amount of energy. In terms of poetry, this formula can usefully be translated as M=wi2:
A Poem’s Meaning = (its words) x (its interpretations)2
Many poems, including short ones, do not come right out and say what they mean. Poets use symbols, images, and sounds to create a network of associations in the reader’s mind, and it’s this network which expresses multiple coexisting interpretations. This is why, just like a small amount of mass equals an enormous amount of energy, lots of prose commentary and analysis is required to clarify even a short poem’s meaning. This is how ambiguity enriches a poem. This is how many poems mean.
No longer, said Dr Mark Dean, are PCs the leading edge of computing.
No single device has taken the PC’s place, he said, instead it has been replaced by the socially-mediated innovation it has fostered.
While IBM was not the first to produce a personal computer, the launch of the 5150 on 12 August 1981 established standards and a design around which many desktop machines have since been built.
Generalizations can be risky, but they’re a goal of all rational intellectual exploration. One example is Albert Einstin’s great achievement about the equivalence of matter and energy, but this generalization is incomplete because it cannot account for the behavior of sub-atomic particles. A greater generalization would be one which explains, completely and without contradiction, the entire physical world. Other examples are aphorisms, but they sometimes contradict each other and are often wrong; the early bird does not always catch the worm. Maybe the greatest generalization of all would be one which rationally explains the meaning of our lives. However, if reality is not ultimately rational, do our greatest generalizations require faith?
Let me show in a parable to what extent our nature is enlightened or unenlightened.
Envision human figures living in an underground cave, with a long entrance across the whole width of the cave. Here they’ve been from their childhood and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning their heads around.
Above and behind them a fire is blazing in the distance. They see only their own shadows which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave. For how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
Between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way and a low wall built along the way like the screen which puppet players have in front of them over which they show the puppets. Do you see men passing along the wall, carrying all sorts of articles which they hold projected above the wall? Statues of men and animals made of wood and stone and various materials?
Of the objects which are being carried in like manner, they would only see the shadows, and if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?
And suppose further that there was an echo which came from the wall. Would they not be sure to think when one of the passers by spoke that the voice came from the passing shadows? To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
And now look again and see what will naturally follow if one of the prisoners is released. At first, when he is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his head round and look towards the light, all this would hurt him and he would be much too dazzled to see distinctly those things whose shadows he had seen before.
And then conceive someone saying to him that what he saw before was an illusion. But that now when he’s approaching nearer to reality and his eyes turn toward more real existence, he has a clearer vision. What will be his reply?
And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, will he not be perplexed? Would he not think that the shadows, which he formerly saw, are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?
And suppose once more that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun itself. When he approaches the light, his eyes will be dazzled. He will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities. He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world.
But first he would see the shadows best, next the reflections of objects in the water, and then the objects themselves.
Then he will gaze upon the stars and the spangled heavens and the light of the moon. He will see the sky and the stars by night. Last of all, he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of it in the water but he will see the sun in its own proper place and not in another.
And he will contemplate the sun, as it is. Would he not proceed to argue that it is the sun who gives the seasons and the years and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which his fellows have been accustomed to behold? Truly he would first see the sun, then reason about it. And when he remembered his old habitation and what was the wisdom of the cave his fellow prisoners, do you not suppose that he would bless himself for the change? Pity them? And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were the quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before and which followed after and which were together and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories? Or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say, with Homer, “better to be the poor servant of a poor master and to endure anything rather than think as they do and live after their manner.”
Imagine, once more, such a one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation. Would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness? And if there were a contest of measuring the shadows and he had to compete with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak and before his eyes have become steady, wouldn’t they all laugh at him and say he had spoiled his eyesight by going up there? That is was better not to even think of ascending?
And if anyone tried to release another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.
They shall give of their help to one another wherever each class is able to help the community.
What do you think of this parable? What’s an example today of seeing the “wrong” reality?
I’ve posted this article because the writer makes statements which seem to contradict both
progressive and conservative thinking.
How consistent are his arguments?
College is a Waste of Time | Dale Stephens, Special to CNN | June 3, 2011 1:23 p.m. EDT
I have been awarded a golden ticket to the heart of Silicon Valley: the Thiel Fellowship. The catch? For two years, I cannot be enrolled as a full-time student at an academic institution. For me, that’s not an issue; I believe higher education is broken.
I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.
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Books & Authors, Storytelling | Tagged: Hunger Games, Storytelling, Susanne Collins, text complexity, young adult | 
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