Monday, October 29, 2012
Types of Translations
The first time is saw the title of Brian Friel's work I didn't fully understand the depth behind it. I was busy on Amazon.com trying to hunt down book after book, and to me it was simply just another title on a long list of works that I was excited to read for the upcoming school year. It wasn't til today in class that I realized that versatility of the title. What exactly is a translation? When people hear the word, they tend to groan thinking about confusing language classes they were forced into during high school. But translations in communication have more to do than just language, and this is evident through the play. The translations aren't only from language to language (english to irish), but also through the different characters' motions, intentions, tone, personality, and intelligence. The play's purpose is to show that when people communicate more is being translated than just words. Sometimes the misunderstandings aren't through a lack of understanding the language, but a lack of understanding the person. A person's identity can be a language itself, and for there are many ideas/actions/likes/thoughts/ that we posses that others do not comprehend. In order to fully communicate with another individual, we as humans must take the time to understand that individual, because when we understand them, then we are speaking the same language.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Life of Layers
Picture this.
You are sitting on the couch. It's a Thursday night, and you are watching your favorite television show, when the commercials start. You get up decide to grab a snack. From your kitchen, you hear the clip for the evening news report as you put some popcorn in the microwave. The clip says that someone has just lost their life in a car accident, but you pay no attention to it or the rest of the commercials, only returning to your couch once the commercials have ended.
Now, Picture this.
Someone is sitting on the couch. It's a Thursday night, and they are watching their favorite television show, when the commercials start. They get up decide to grab a snack. From their kitchen, they hear the clip for the evening news report as they put some popcorn in the microwave. The clip says that someone has just lost their life in a car accident, but they pay no attention to it or the rest of the commercials, only returning to their couch once the commercials have ended.
You were in the car.
In life, humans like to distance themselves from the bad: illness, heartbreak, poverty, depression, death, ect.It's a defense mechanism, a way to ensure our own safety and optimum happiness, by avoiding the qualities of life that trigger unhappiness. So, if something or someone doesn't concern us, we simply don't worry about it/them. So if when we hear the negative, for example, someone died, we brush them off our shoulder and worry not. But in this process, we De-humanize other human beings. How else would we make it through our days? Bad things happen all the time, and they happen to everyone. If we worried about everything, we would make ourselves sick. We assume that if we don't care or take action, that someone else will, but the thing is, how many other people share this thought? If everyone isn't caring, because they know someone else will care for them, who is that someone?
Our lives our layered upon each others, and, like it or not, we will always be linked to everyone, including the people we never encounter. The world is a neighborhood and we are all members of it's community. Everyone on earth is your neighbor, and my moral is that you should treat them the way you wish to be treated. Do the best you can to help out, lend a listening ear, or offer a second's worth of sympathy, because you never know when you could be the person on the couch, or the person in the car.
You are sitting on the couch. It's a Thursday night, and you are watching your favorite television show, when the commercials start. You get up decide to grab a snack. From your kitchen, you hear the clip for the evening news report as you put some popcorn in the microwave. The clip says that someone has just lost their life in a car accident, but you pay no attention to it or the rest of the commercials, only returning to your couch once the commercials have ended.
Now, Picture this.
Someone is sitting on the couch. It's a Thursday night, and they are watching their favorite television show, when the commercials start. They get up decide to grab a snack. From their kitchen, they hear the clip for the evening news report as they put some popcorn in the microwave. The clip says that someone has just lost their life in a car accident, but they pay no attention to it or the rest of the commercials, only returning to their couch once the commercials have ended.
You were in the car.
In life, humans like to distance themselves from the bad: illness, heartbreak, poverty, depression, death, ect.It's a defense mechanism, a way to ensure our own safety and optimum happiness, by avoiding the qualities of life that trigger unhappiness. So, if something or someone doesn't concern us, we simply don't worry about it/them. So if when we hear the negative, for example, someone died, we brush them off our shoulder and worry not. But in this process, we De-humanize other human beings. How else would we make it through our days? Bad things happen all the time, and they happen to everyone. If we worried about everything, we would make ourselves sick. We assume that if we don't care or take action, that someone else will, but the thing is, how many other people share this thought? If everyone isn't caring, because they know someone else will care for them, who is that someone?
Our lives our layered upon each others, and, like it or not, we will always be linked to everyone, including the people we never encounter. The world is a neighborhood and we are all members of it's community. Everyone on earth is your neighbor, and my moral is that you should treat them the way you wish to be treated. Do the best you can to help out, lend a listening ear, or offer a second's worth of sympathy, because you never know when you could be the person on the couch, or the person in the car.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Removing the Barrier
I flipped through the pamphlet, anxious for the show to begin. I skimmed through the bios and glanced at the pages when my eyes were drawn to a statement addressed in bold black letters.
"Life is a drama without an intermission"
My eyes lingered on the phrase.
The lights started to dim, so I tossed the pamphlet beneath my seat, but the phrase impacted me more than the show.
"Life is a drama without an intermission", for some reason I thought of the nickelodeons popular during the Great Depression. How for fifty cents, you could relieve yourself from a day's worries. It was an escape, an intermission from the Depression. Then I started thinking of my own personal intermissions from life : study breaks, long walks with my iPod, writing, reading, and Facebook. I, like most people, turn to these activities for relief. We dive within these activities to forget about the troubles of life. Unfortunately, sometimes while in this state of relief, we become passive. Our skills of interpretation and observation are numbed as a method for stress relief. This numbed state can lead to a lack of understanding, especially in novels. Reading, a leisure activity, is used by many as a source of escape, but it is also used by writers as a source of communication. During this mental state of passivity, readers on not picking up the message the author is trying to convey.
Why is that though?
Because the reader has a barrier between the work and themselves. For them, it is merely a book. A source of stress relief and why would they strain themselves trying to understand the message of the author. It has nothing to do with the, why should they get involve with more troubles? Create more things to keep on the brain?
How does one defeat this discommunication?
Change the source.
For me, Persepolis was an intermission from college stress. It was homework that I actually enjoyed doing. As I read deeper and deeper into the novel, my reading skills grew more and more passive, and I ended up reading it for pleasure than trying to understand the author's message. I was able to passivly read the book, because I had a barrier between the narrator and myself. She was a child in Iran, and I was a teenager in Illinois. I couldn't relate, therefore I couldn't understand. Why should I? It was merely a book. I wanted to enjoy it anyway.
Watching the film, I saw a completely different story than the one I had read. Everything that happened in the book happened in the movie, but now it was the source of the story. Visually seeing her live her life, made her story seem more like a biography than a work of fiction. Seeing her interact with her parents, play with her friends, and go to school all in the shadow of her nation's chaos: made her story realistic- relate-able even.
We has humans build up barriers between us and troubles : it's a defensive instinct. In order for us to gain understanding, we must tear down this barrier, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Vulnerable enough to feel the pain the narrator is experiencing, think the confusion the narrator is thinking, and live the life the narrator is living : because only than can we understand the work.
"Life is a drama without an intermission"
My eyes lingered on the phrase.
The lights started to dim, so I tossed the pamphlet beneath my seat, but the phrase impacted me more than the show.
"Life is a drama without an intermission", for some reason I thought of the nickelodeons popular during the Great Depression. How for fifty cents, you could relieve yourself from a day's worries. It was an escape, an intermission from the Depression. Then I started thinking of my own personal intermissions from life : study breaks, long walks with my iPod, writing, reading, and Facebook. I, like most people, turn to these activities for relief. We dive within these activities to forget about the troubles of life. Unfortunately, sometimes while in this state of relief, we become passive. Our skills of interpretation and observation are numbed as a method for stress relief. This numbed state can lead to a lack of understanding, especially in novels. Reading, a leisure activity, is used by many as a source of escape, but it is also used by writers as a source of communication. During this mental state of passivity, readers on not picking up the message the author is trying to convey.
Why is that though?
Because the reader has a barrier between the work and themselves. For them, it is merely a book. A source of stress relief and why would they strain themselves trying to understand the message of the author. It has nothing to do with the, why should they get involve with more troubles? Create more things to keep on the brain?
How does one defeat this discommunication?
Change the source.
For me, Persepolis was an intermission from college stress. It was homework that I actually enjoyed doing. As I read deeper and deeper into the novel, my reading skills grew more and more passive, and I ended up reading it for pleasure than trying to understand the author's message. I was able to passivly read the book, because I had a barrier between the narrator and myself. She was a child in Iran, and I was a teenager in Illinois. I couldn't relate, therefore I couldn't understand. Why should I? It was merely a book. I wanted to enjoy it anyway.
Watching the film, I saw a completely different story than the one I had read. Everything that happened in the book happened in the movie, but now it was the source of the story. Visually seeing her live her life, made her story seem more like a biography than a work of fiction. Seeing her interact with her parents, play with her friends, and go to school all in the shadow of her nation's chaos: made her story realistic- relate-able even.
We has humans build up barriers between us and troubles : it's a defensive instinct. In order for us to gain understanding, we must tear down this barrier, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Vulnerable enough to feel the pain the narrator is experiencing, think the confusion the narrator is thinking, and live the life the narrator is living : because only than can we understand the work.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Bildungsroman
I found myself at my usual post; slumped upon a computer chair, hands resting lifelessly on the keyboard, and a brain resting lifelessly in my head. I had to write my post tonight. Tomorrow was consumed by rehearsal and Spanish review for my exam the upcoming Wednesday. I was determined to write my blog tonight whether my brain was willing to cooperate was out of the question. But, as per usual, I was at a loss as to where I should begin. Being the creative being that I am, I channeled my source of infinite imagination - google.
Typing " Persepolis, themes and symbols", I discovered numerous usuless sites along with a new word.
Bildungsroman.
Wow.
"That sounds like fun" I thought. The description of it proved more interesting than the phonics of the word.
According to Mariam-Websters Dictionary, Bildungsroman is a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character. Persepolis is a Bildungsroman. Every story within her book is a moment in which she experienced moral or psychological growth. With this new found knowledge came inspiration, my writer's block defeated.
Persepolis: the Poem
It happened when I was but a child
no older than the age of ten.
That my innocence was defiled,
and never to be repaired again.
My world crumbled faster
than cookie shared by two.
How quickly it became a disaster
seems too impossible to be true.
Chaos consumed all my life
and turned it upside down,
most of it was the strife
when the revolution came to town.
I didn't understand
and I couldn't comprehend;
how people made, demand after demand
only to have a new append.
I lost my uncle along the way
and I lost my home as well.
I've lost so much, I cannot say,
my life had been an eternal hell.
But I've grown from all my trials.
I even overcame the worst.
The lessons learned make them worthwhile
even those I didn't understand at first.
I apologize for the length of this poem,
it may sound a bit garrulous,
but my story must be known,
this poem is Persepolis.
.
Typing " Persepolis, themes and symbols", I discovered numerous usuless sites along with a new word.
Bildungsroman.
Wow.
"That sounds like fun" I thought. The description of it proved more interesting than the phonics of the word.
According to Mariam-Websters Dictionary, Bildungsroman is a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character. Persepolis is a Bildungsroman. Every story within her book is a moment in which she experienced moral or psychological growth. With this new found knowledge came inspiration, my writer's block defeated.
Persepolis: the Poem
It happened when I was but a child
no older than the age of ten.
That my innocence was defiled,
and never to be repaired again.
My world crumbled faster
than cookie shared by two.
How quickly it became a disaster
seems too impossible to be true.
Chaos consumed all my life
and turned it upside down,
most of it was the strife
when the revolution came to town.
I didn't understand
and I couldn't comprehend;
how people made, demand after demand
only to have a new append.
I lost my uncle along the way
and I lost my home as well.
I've lost so much, I cannot say,
my life had been an eternal hell.
But I've grown from all my trials.
I even overcame the worst.
The lessons learned make them worthwhile
even those I didn't understand at first.
I apologize for the length of this poem,
it may sound a bit garrulous,
but my story must be known,
this poem is Persepolis.
.
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