A Tesseract

The things I found most interesting throughout reading the Sound and the Fury, were the new ways in which time was viewed. I began to think about how time was viewed in other works as well, for instance Siddhartha, the elves in The Lord of the Rings, Nicolas Flamel in Harry Potter, the three witches in A Wrinkle in Time. All really great reads that have touched tons of people, so maybe there's some point about time and the way it is viewed that I am missing. Is time linear and one dimensional? Are the lifespans of humans as short as a second compared to some? Is there really any such thing as time, or is everything simply one thing? It sounds profound, but it seems to me that if all these renowned people are talking about time in different ways, then maybe there is something else to it.
I also related time to the title too. The SOUND and the FURY. Is the title talking about time? The sound of a clock. The fury that time brings when it runs out or lasts too long.
Seemingly this book has set me back quite further on the road to knowledge than when I began it. However, now that I am writing this and thinking about it, maybe knowledge is how many questions one asks, or can possibly think of. If that's the case, then I think I'm going in the right direction.

Pass the Peas Please

“The voice of the surf…was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning “Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the whites of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies in grotesque masks-these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away.”

In most peoples’ minds there is a clear line drawn between the civil and the uncivil. In Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, this line blurs to the point of insignificance. At first, the ivory hunters and soldiers seem civil by trying to suppress the strange and violent natures of the savages. However; once they get into the thick of the wilderness, the distinction between what is civil and what is not, becomes indistinguishable. The true significance of the issue however, lies not in civility itself, but in the distinction between what is real and what is not.

Marlow appreciates the reality of the river, but how can he find that same reality within the uncivilized savages of Africa? He sees the natives and feels comforted, so when he finds Kurtz, who puts this feeling into words, Marlow finally understands that the darkness does not truly lie within the uncivilized. The word civil and all of its connotations don’t matter. Only reality matters. There is no reason to civilization, it is not natural and it is not reality. In so called civilized society, people don’t pick their noses in public or put their elbows on the dinner table, but if left to their own devices, most people would act against these norms of civility, and venture into the realm of reality.

The colonel in Apocalypse Now floats down the same river of reality to find the same truths in Kurtz’s words. The savages he encounters, with all of their grotesquely formed bodies, represent reality. He finds that at the core of every soul there are uncivilized feelings. He sees the uncivilized actions of the soldiers cloaked under the premise of bringing civilization. The soldiers play Wagner as they slaughter the innocent along with the rebels, but the distinction doesn’t matter in the soldier’s minds, because they are all uncivilized.

The uncivilized savages of the jungle represent the reality of human nature, as natural as a river. But once venturing into proper society, the reality of human nature is masked by what is deemed to be civil. When Marlow and the Colonel finally reach Kurtz, they understand this reality. Kurtz has reached this realization long ago, and it has driven him mad. He dies with this knowledge, screaming, “The horror! The horror!”

Blog Post #7-Waiting for the Flop

“How Much Shall We Bet?” At first I thought the story by Italo Calvino was about gambling. How interesting could this possibly get? Yeah, ok, life’s a gamble or something like that. Then the first four words hit me. “The logic of cybernetics.” What does that have to do with gambling? Nothing, I soon found out. “How Much Shall We Bet” is not only complex within the word choice, but also within the concept. Why is the concept so complex?, I couldn’t tell you, because I don’t know what the concept is. Almost the entire story resists interpretation, and one has to look instead, for the parts that don’t resist interpretation. All the points one can possibly make about this story are speculation(which is ironic, seeing as the whole story is speculative in and of itself). One part that I felt I could possibly understand was when Qfwfq started losing bets, even though he hadn’t miscalculated. To me, this represented the uncalulable nature of humanity. No matter how many “components” are brought together to make a prediction, noone can predict anything about humanity, because humans are always logical, except when they are not. To me, Qfwfq got caught in a paradox. His words had more meaning than he knew when he said, “correct myself how? On the basis of what?” There isn’t a basis, there is no rationale behind the actions of humans, except when there is.

There are so many questions, this story leads to, but none of them are really answerable, which is why this story is so captivating. Anyone could bet anything about everything, but no matter the odds, there will never be a sure victory, because human nature crushes all reasoning.

Blog Post #6-Fated Violence-Paper

Peace is not peppered with moments of violence, rather violence is lightly salted with the taste of peace. Dodge, Duck. Run for cover. Wave that once-white flag of history. However passionately humanity gropes at peace, our fate is to succumb to the essential human tendency towards violence. These insubstantial wisps of peace signal a temporary shift in understanding that allows people to realize that the only free will they have is the ability to choose whether or not to accept their fate. The stories of “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” “Oedipus Rex,” “Othello,” and “The Dumb Waiter,” lay out these multi’faceted paths of understanding, and pave them with humanity’s different perceptions of reality, all ultimately ending in fated tragedy.



1. THEME-violence
a. Understanding/acceptance of fate signals essential human tendency towards violence
i. No separation between animals(Othello) except that we kill not out of necessity –worse than animals.
b. Ppl try to avoid or question their fate, but the shift in understanding/situation leads them to understand that they can’t avoid their fate.
i. Duality of understanding/different levels.
1. 1st-understanding of situation
2. 2nd-understanding that you can’t avoid your fate
a. one type of understanding leads to the other
c. relation to present day
i. wars
ii. ex:use “the dumb waiter”- more present day.
1. Shows today’s common mindset

Blog Post #5-Iago, living in the real reality

What I thought about as I read Othello, was that Iago just might have the right idea about how and why people tic. Maybe the fact that he had to meddle and not just understand makes him “a moral pyromaniac”, but I think that the rest of the characters were the ones living in an alternate reality. The reality even today is that in every aspect of human life, there is something to be exploited and someone willing to do it. In the case of Iago, he didn’t “set fire to all of reality,” just to the false one in which the rest of the characters lived.

Blog Post #4-Morrocan Oasis

Blog Post #3-Just Gimme Some Truth

I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, shortsighted,
narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth