Metamorphosis of a Writer

Humans need to make changes to both how we use the things Nature gives to us, and the way we treat others. That is the only way the human race will be able to survive the global catastrophe we humans cause.

April 7–Source Sheet due, have all ten sources.

April 8–Figure out presentation points, blog about sources and topic of paper

Weekend of April 10-11–Finish Annotated Bibliography

April 14–Finish Rough Draft for the 16th

Weekend of April 17-18–Blog about process so far, type Peer Review

April 20–Blog #12 about Thesis Statement

April 22–Make sure First Submission is ready to roll for tomorrow

April 26–Blog about how First Submission turned out and corrections needed

Weekend of May 1-2–Revise paper for the 3rd (peer reviews)

May 4–Go through Second Submission one last time to make sure it’s perfect before turning in on the 5th, Blog #13 about Final Reflection

As I stated in my last post, I completely changed my topic. I shall be using the source we were given in class, yes, but I also went out and got a new one. So this lovely little number, entitled “Bokononism in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle” and written by A.R. Marth, is my new primary source for all things Bokonon, other than the book, of course. Yes, I am taking my explorations of the novel to a whole new level which I couldn’t discover any explorations directly relating to: how the different types of character in this novel, with their different personality quirks, react to Bokononism and, I guess, the island of San Lorenzo. We read their different reactions, but I want to fully analyze them using the article we received from Stephanie. And yeah I know this is going to be one hell of a hard paper.

On to my annotations of my (new) source:

The article starts out with the very first sentence from the books of Bokonon, “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” That statement, though not the first sentence in Cat’s Cradle, gives the emotion behind Vonnegut’s entire work. The events in the novel we read, as they were recorded by Jonah, were truths. However, everything that people knew, their very existences, were based on lies they had been told by everyone else, from the government to their parents. To be honest, that seems like Vonnegut’s view of our reality, and I can’t help but agree with him on that. Our lives are made up of a lot of things, and we spend a hell of a lot of time figuring out that what we were so sure of was nothing but a lie.

The next part of my critical source sums up the background of Bokononism and the fundamental principles of the religion. It states that “Bokononism is a loose amalgamation of humanism, agnosticism, and the interjected opinion and thoughts of Vonnegut himself.” I suppose that’s why I still want to be a Bokononist. I went from being Catholic to agnostic my freshman year of high school, and from there I developed very humanistic principles. I believe in all of the humanistic parts of Catholicism, but I still don’t care for the more overbearing rules and regulations.

The next focus of my source is the connection between Vonnegut and Bokonon. The author makes the connection that Bokonon is Vonnegut’s voice in this novel, and it is through Bokonon’s actions and words, particularly his Books of Bokonon, that Vonnegut’s opinions really come to light.

The author then finishes up by talking about how Bokononism explains things in the world and humans’ social interactions in simple terms. In science, it is the simplest ways of explaining things that win out over the others. I like the simplicity in which human nature is described. Humans are mud. We get to see and talk for a while, but we will always be mud. The meaning behind this is that we will always be simple creatures with simple needs, so they will always solve their problems in simple ways with simple minds.

Well, those are my annotations for now, so… See you in class tomorrow!

I quite enjoyed reading this, actually, and have decided to change my paper because of this. My new topic is going to be the reaction between Bokononism and egotism. It shall be glorious, I promise. But anyway, on to my interpretation of this article and my annotating.

My general impression from this paper, in fact, I scrawled it across the top, is that everything is about power. There are different kinds of power, yes, but what it all boils down to is control over things. I shall next continue my analysis and annotations by following along the text, just generally commenting and giving analysis.

My thoughts begin in the very first paragraph, about six lines down, about Cat’s Cradle being seen as “a doomsday prediction should science and technology continue their way uninfluenced by humanistic values.” My comment is: Haven’t they? Isn’t that the world we are living in? Vonnegut couldn’t have foreseen the abortion boom, but that is a heartless science, not to mention very egotistical, getting rid of unwanted human beings to further the lives of already existing individuals. My second comment has to do with this, “Vonnegut delineates an unrestrained egotism which for the first time in history becomes the progenitor of apocalypse.” My question here is, why are we still moving in this direction? We have egos the size of brontosauruses, worrying about money and politics and status. Like I said, everything comes down to power, and the human race likes it too much. The next thing I paid attention to was the comment about revolution, which still ultimately is about control, not about being free.

And I recognized, right when it comes to the part about “a suppression of parts of the self crucial to a healthy functioning of the human psyche” that that is what the world does. That is what they are teaching us. Society wants us to suppress our superegos, our consciences. To get ahead and to become powerful, we are told that we should suppress our ids, our emotions. What does that leave us with? Reason. Ego. The desire for more knowledge, not to help others or to help ourselves. Just the need for more in our  heads, to know how things work and move on.

By reading this article I started to see how I fit into this concept of self. Either unfortunately or fortunately, I am the person who suppresses my ego, my reason. I act on emotion, purely on such, with maybe a bit of reason in there, and then if things turn out badly my conscience will kick in. Actually, I’ve started to get better, and my conscience kicks in before I act. But what I do is almost always unaffected by reason, unless I need it to figure out how I can make my emotional schemes work. My mind is a strange place.

I think my id-ness is why I connected best to Newt in this book. I understood him the best, I could empathize with how it felt to have your love leave you, and I recognized his artistic and rambling mind. Mine is rather rambling right now, isn’t it? Then I suppose I’ll leave it here for tonight. Goodnight world, I love you! And I will do my best to save you all from those heartless bastards running everything.

In Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, he brings up a slew of satire regarding the Cold War and aspects of such. Needless to say, Vonnegut understands the way people thought back then, their motivation for thinking the things they did, and the results of the actions the people’s thoughts brought about. That is the only way he could successfully write about this topic. Actually, that is the only way writers in general can truly make a topic feasible–understand the history so that you don’t sound ignorant to your audience. Anyway, because he does such, Vonnegut can satirize all the different things he does.

One of those things is the elitist notions we Americans have about ourselves. This is why I chose this as my paper topic, I can rant about it all day. Vonnegut sees the silly ideas Americans have about our nation being better than the others. I guess I’ll break down his, and my, ideas about this.

First of all, Americans are ignorant of the outside world. You can tell this easily when we travel to other countries. Americans are obnoxious tourists. My family went to Italy last spring break, my siblings’ and my first time out of the country. My sister and I went to a cafe in Florence to get lunch while the rest of my family toured a museum. (Okay, as 17- and 15-year-old girls, we were more interested in the fluorescent lights on the stairs inside the Gucci shop in Rome than in the museums that take forever to walk through with our mother stopping to look at EVERY SINGLE THING. It took three hours to get through the Vatican museums, and that was before we even got to the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, which I will admit was one of my favorite things.) Well, while we were in that cafe, this woman in front of us who you could tell was American… Oh gosh. When she left the shop, she called to the men behind the counter, “Arriveducci!” My sister and I started giggling, because even we knew that you say it arr-ee-vay-der-chee. And the people in other countries, while they adore our money, despise our ignorance. They think we have no culture and do not care about anyone but ourselves. And I have to say, the people we have visible to the world are very selfish people with lots and lots of money, which includes most of the tourists (since to do so you have to have some wad of cash somewhere).

Secondly, Americans truly think that our country is better. Why? Because we have “democracy.” We also have “free will.” We are supposedly a very independent people, which I find quite hysterical and disturbing considering the present recession.I’m not sure what we’re independent of, but it definitely isn’t Mr. Washington. We need other nations, too. We didn’t care about the rest of the world’s problems until they became our own, back during the World Wars. Then we just kept caring, possibly too much, through the Korean and Vietnam wars. We became the Helpers, bestowing our kindness and democracy on the rest of the world, spreading American ideals across the globe.

Don’t get me wrong, I love America. But I hate all the negative images that we are associated with.

The stance of both ads should be fairly obvious by previous posts. Also, if you’ve seen them, you kind of get the idea. However, if it is still cloudy, let me break it down for you.

There is a war going on. Verizon and AT&T are kinda fighting for customers.

The stance of the Verizon commercial is rather interesting, I thought. They took a commercial for the iPhone, made by Apple, and made it their own. Instead of “There’s an Ap for That” it is “There’s a Map for That.” The interesting part? They took the commercial from a phone with AT&T coverage. Does that mean that Apple has more productive phones? Could that be because of the services they provide, including cell phone coverage? I don’t know, just a thought I had.

The AT&T commercial with Luke Wilson takes a very sarcastic take on the situation. “Well, they aren’t coming back…” Oh, Luke. They also take a less malicious stance than their competitor that is still very effective. They go for the other aspects of Verizon that are not up to AT&T standards, in this case Verizon’s lack of rollover minutes.

A quick note on things I have heard from others, even before I started in on this topic, on which of the companies is better… Just in case you are making the decision between the two. As I’ve said, I have AT&T, as do a few of my friends. We all like the coverage, because it is infinitely better than that little blue map Verizon uses. My friends that have Verizon hate the coverage, the dropped calls, etc. It is my personal opinion that if I had a choice of coverage from every cell phone company in the United States, I would choose AT&T, no questions asked. Sprint just has problems in general and Verizon thinks it’s running for a political office or something with all of its underhanded ads.

But all this is my opinion. Do your own research.

The audience of the ads I chose is very simple. First of all there are the customers of both companies. Those people are very important because they …

Okay, I’m not sure if you noticed, but that was the most terribly boring beginning to anything ever invented. So it is thus time to jazz this thing up.

The audience of an ad, any ad, is someone who has the time to actually view the ad. Ads are not typically directed toward people who live in the middle of NOWHERE. They are not directed toward extremely active people who could care less about popular anything. They are instead meant for people who take the time to read the newspaper, or drive aimlessly anywhere, or who enjoy sitting in one spot watching moving pictures for hours on end not caring about what is going on around them. If you really think about it, you are one or more of these people. That’s what advertisers enjoy, the people who apparently don’t form their own opinions.

In this case, the people the advertisers want to influence toward their evil, malicious exploitations involving cell phone companies and the coverage that is provided. Verizon wants to capture AT&T customers as well as people who are on the fence about both companies. AT&T wants to win back their stolen customers as well as defend their company and sell many more of their better services. Both are also admittedly selling themselves without inhibition at the end, advertising their phones like there wasn’t just malicious attacking going on.

So the audience is really those of us who are unpersuaded by these arguments and would rather just go by our own judgments of both companies. I don’t know about everyone else, but AT&T is totally my favorite, and did not attack first. Plus, the monologue that Luke Wilson had was entertaining.