From page 26 of 1984 by George Orwell:
"He took a twenty-five-cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, an on the wrapping of a cigarette packet--everywhere."
I've read this book several times in the past. With all the symbolism, it's easy to rouse interesting thoughts concerning 1984. I find this particular quote necessary to the plot of this novel because it emphasizes the fact the Winston was living in an environment where all forms of communication are controlled. America would be a land of chaos if the government forbade us to write. In 1984, Big Brother utilized writing in two ways to controll the citizens of Oceania--one, to make himself and his message present everywhere as this quote represents, and two, to restrict the citizens from individualism, which writing greatly promotes.
At one point earlier in the novel, Winston asks himself while preparing to write in his beloved diary, how the world is supposed to communicate with the future. One would think the answer is easy in a literate nation, but for Winston writing was punishable by death, so why would one risk death to communicate with the future?
*I tried to publish this initially when the blogs were down*
Page 213:
"Print intensified the tendency to individualism as all historians have testified. " -McCluhan, The Guetenberg Galaxy
In this portion of the book, McCluhan discusses the need to re-vamp the number system after letters had been improved upon so much; however, I didn't chose this quote for my agenda item to talk about that matter.
Even though writing as we know it today is standardized to the point where everybody must conform to the rules of the alphabet to use it successfully as a communications device--writing truly did individualize society and continues to do so today. Writing allowed people to first secretly break away from (make changes to, improve upon, ect.) their faith or government, or parents, any "governing body" in their lives through personal diaries. Diaries were some of the first documents of manuscript culture. Writing allows these ideas to eventually be spread, due to the passing of time, even if the author's intention was to keep the ideas private. We express our individualism in clothing, hairstyle, generally aestethic choices. When manuscript culture was generating, most people conformed in those areas. There were specific styles of dress and ways to wear hair and facial hair depending on your social rank. Today, young adults use the internet in the form of blogs and social interaction tools like Facebook and MySpace to add to their individualism. Even the name "MySpace" signifies that this is your own personal slot on the world wide web where you can express who you are and how your ideas may be similar or different to your next door neighbor, or a young adult in Indonesia somewhere. Where conformity was once looked upon as ideal (God forbid a man sport a goatee when full beards where in style) manuscript culture helped to bring about the beauty of the individual, which today is something we all strive for. In a way, individualism has become the trend--so I suppose if we're all trying to be individual we're conforming still--but oh well.
"With the availability of quantities of manufactured paper, especially after the twelfth century, the growth of bureaucratic and centralist organization of distant areas got under way again." -McCluhan
This relates to one of my arguments for manuscript culture: It unified us and continues to do so today. Initially writing was used for record-keeping in business which can really be broken down to a public relations tactic. In order to run businesses efficiently and keep customers satisfied, people found it necessary to work in some method of documentation to ensure customers were getting what they paid for. Employers also needed writing to keep their business organized and their employees content--without writing there was really no structure to how businesses were run. Then, as writing wove itself into our everyday lives, it unified us again the way oral communications could take days to achieve--sending a letter was much more efficient in the middle ages than sending a messenger by foot. On a global scale, as McCluhan mentions, writing was able to unify countries. Governments could correspond with one another more clearly and again, more quickly than before. As McCluhan points out though, before writing could be effective in communications on a wide scale, paper and writing tools needed to be massed produced and readily available.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe
Hah! When I started reading this I didn't catch that the words were all misspelled until I looked at "Elingsh." I first thought it was the name of a university. I had to post this, I think it ties in with some topics were discussing in EL336.
Lynch Field security measures studied by Bob Stiles for the Tribune-Review
This article caught my eye first when I Googled for local news in Westmoreland County, because I spent much of my youth at Lynch Field figure skating during the winter months, as they melt the ice down in the summer for the deck hockey players. Aside from skating there, I attend Greensburg Community Days there every year, a popular annual event for the city. It's a beautiful complex and a great place to do some physical activity whether it be walking, biking, skating, or using the Aerobics Center. To read that people were vandalizing the complex made me shake my head.
It made me shake my head just the same way as seeing fallen student artwork or tore up turf on the practice fields on campus does. Students vandalize SHU property on practically a daily basis--just look at the Police Blotter in any issue of The Setonian--or for that matter, just look around campus. It never takes long for new additions to campus to be destroyed by some immature, ignorant student. The Setonian makes a point to cover vandalism on campus, whether through a column or a news story, or even through photos. The Setonian can benefit from the journalistic practice in this article because this article demonstrates well-roundedness and presentation of all possible facts. The Setonian has a habit of simply blaming the students for everything when in reality we need campus police to make more of an appearance all over campus (invest in another Jeep?) and we also need more cameras, an action the city is taking with security at Lynch Field. In this article Stiles makes sure he presents first the issue at hand: the improved security measures being discussed by the Greensburg Council. The Setonian, instead of just focusing on the actual acts of vandalism, could focus more on what's being done to prevent future destruction of campus. Stiles then continues on to describe the vandalism/reasons why increased security is being discussed. True use of the inverted pyramid considering the angle of the article.
From Page 49 of "If On a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino:
"Me? I don't read books!" Irnerio says.
"What do you read, then?"
"Nothing. I've become so accustomed to not reading that I don't even read what appears before my eyes. It's not easy: they teach us to read as children, and for the rest of our lives we remain the slaves of all the written stuff they fling in front of us. I may have had to make some effort myself, at first, to learn not to read, but now it comes quite naturally to me. The secret is not refusing to look at the written words. On the contrary, you must look at them, intensely, until they disappear."
I found this passage very powerful-- it took me back to some of our first discussions in class when we all realized how much we take reading and writing for granted. Once we know how to read well, we can just glance at text and know what it says automatically, like looking at an image. It is impossible to look at text and not read it if you are literate. Right?
Letters are just images in the first place. Symbols crafted over centuries to represent the sounds our mouths make when we're speaking. How is it possible to look at letters if you're a literate individual and not automatically process the words they're forming to the meaning of those words? It's so interesting to think about. Is it possible to become...de-liter-ized? Haha--ummm...unliterate, deliterate...I'm not sure... but you get the point.
From Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, pg. 97:
"Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had at learned this, she assisted me in my learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read."
When I read this I wondered what Plato would think. To Plato, writing was of lower intelligence when compared to oral communication. During in the classical world, writing defined intelligence--by this time period, illiteracy was looked down upon despite the fact that writing wasn't yet widely taught. Those who could read and write in the classical world defined their social stature by the type of script they wrote in. In Douglass' time of the mid 1800s in America, the ability to read and write was considered necessary by wealthy slave-owners and other higher class citizens who had the time and money to be taught. The ability to read and write was the social barrier between the slave and his owner; by teaching Douglass to read and write, Mrs. Auld was breaking the employee to employer boundaries and allowing Douglass to let his guard down around a women who could (back then) rightfully command his every move. Still today we consider those who lack to ability to read and write less fortunate than ourselves. Luckily today illiteracy is viewed as a problem that needs to be solved instead of an intended language and class barrier.