Absolute PowerPoint

            The story about Sarah Wyndham using PowerPoint that Parker begins his article with reflects our society’s move towards being a visual culture, where we understand things better by actually seeing them. Wyndham’s use of bullet points clearly breaks down the main points of the problem so her daughters actually listen. If speakers are to successfully communicate their intended message, they need to convey it in a manner that captures the attention of their audience. Wyndham realized this and used PowerPoint to grab her daughters’ attention to get them to do what she wanted.

Parker uses this story to show that PowerPoint can be a useful visual aid that helps make it easier for audiences to receive, understand, and retain messages. Parker makes a good argument, though, about the downside of PowerPoint. From the beginning of my high school career up to now, I have been using PowerPoint for most of my presentations for my classes. I do find, as Parker argues, that PowerPoint edits my ideas for my presentations. The phrase Bob Gaskins found with Parker about PowerPoint, “‘Allows the content-originator to control the presentation,’” is interesting (Parker 4). While people who make PowerPoint presentations have control over them, at the same time, their PowerPoint presentations control them by editing the ideas they would have used without PowerPoint.

This problem of editing Parker raises also reminds me of the Strand anthology and how a poem’s form can affect the way a poem is written. For example, with iambic pentameter, there can only be a certain number of syllables (ten) in a line, which restricts word choice and can change the ideas contained in the poem. Similarly, with PowerPoint, presenters have to be able to phrase their information in a way that fits with the pre-set slide layouts.

            I like the metaphors Parker suggests that be used for PowerPoint, especially when he says “PowerPoint is more like a suit of clothes” (Parker 1). It shows how, just as audience members judge speakers on the way they dress, they also judge them on their PowerPoint presentations. As the way people dress sends a message about them, what they include in their PowerPoint also communicates something about them. I also like how Parker compares PowerPoint to “a business manual as well as a business suit, with an opinion…about the way we should think” (Parker 1). His personification of the program as someone with an opinion telling you how to do something makes me think of PowerPoint as being like another boss controlling the way you do your work. As PowerPoint “also makes its own case: about how to organize information, how much information to organize, how to look at the world,” it would be frustrating having to “report” to two different people (Parker 1). Despite the limitations of PowerPoint, it is still a useful tool at the disposal of presenters to help persuade their audiences.

Know It All

It’s ironic how, although there is no assurance the information in Wikipedia’s articles are accurate,  Wikipedia “is now the seventeenth-most-popular site on the Internet, generating more traffic daily than MSNBC.com and the online versions of the Times and the Wall Street Journal combined” (Schiff, paragraph 2). What makes it even more interesting is that there had already been a failed attempt by “a devious Frenchman, Pierre Bayle, to conceive of an encyclopedia composed solely of errors” (Schiff, paragraph 6). Although Wikipedia may not be full of errors, it is still not a reliable source to use. As “the facts may [emphasis added] be sturdy,” it can be difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.

Schiff has a good point about traditional encyclopedias only covering a narrow range of topics. Wikipedia is good in that it has articles on nearly every topic that can be written about. However, just because Wikipedia has articles on all of those subjects doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re accurate. Since “anyone with Internet access can create a Wikipedia entry or edit an existing one,” the entries may contain false information (Schiff, paragraph 3). While “there is no question that Wikipedia beats every other source when it comes to breadth, efficiency, and accessibility,” “‘We can get the wrong answer to a question quicker than our fathers and mothers could find a pencil’” (Schiff, paragraph 30). Therefore, it doesn’t do much good for Wikipedia to cover a broad number of topics when the information won’t necessarily be correct.

I also found it interesting what Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation that runs Wikipedia, said about making an entry on Robert Merton and options-pricing theory. “‘They were going to take my essay and send it to two finance professors in the field,’ he recalled. ‘I had been out of academia for several years. It was intimidating; it felt like homework’” (Schiff, paragraph 9). This quote by Wales makes me think about how Wikipedia works and how its articles are posted. While traditional encyclopedias do carry out the research and put in the effort to make sure that their information is correct, some people who create or edit Wikipedia entries don’t necessarily do that. Unfortunately, many people choose to read Wikipedia over traditional encyclopedias, which are more reliable sources of information.

While Wikipedia has taken more measures towards heading off false information, it is hard to imagine that every entry on Wikipedia will get looked over often enough to ensure the information will stay correct. Although “Wikipedia has become a regulatory thicket, complete with an elaborate hierarchy of users and policies about policies,” there are so many entries that, as one entry is corrected, five more will have been changed with incorrect information (Schiff, paragraph 24).

Pygmalion Blog 2

I like the non-traditional way Shaw dramatically ends Pygmalion, moving away from the typical “fairly tale” ending one sees with the original Pygmalion myth. Eliza doesn’t need to follow some literary formula by marrying Higgins. It is an especially poetic ending because of Higgins’s comment that, “You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I havnt put into her head or a word that I havnt put into her mouth” (Shaw, act 5, page 93). Eliza shows she is a human being who can make decisions on her own.

I was amused by Higgins and Pickering when they arrived at Mrs. Higgins’s house in a state of bewilderment at the beginning of act 5. Although his mother said there would be problems with his experiment, Higgins just shrugged her warning off and continued on with it. Now, though, he all of a sudden needs her help. Pickering made a humorous comment about the policeman helping in the search for Eliza: “The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really think he suspected us of some improper purpose” (Shaw, act 5, page 86). Pickering says this comment as if the policeman were nosily interfering with them, when that’s the policeman’s job—to make sure nothing illegal is going on, like them owning Eliza like she is, as Mrs. Higgins says, “a lost umbrella” (Shaw, act 5, page 86).

I was also amused by Higgins’s little rant directed at Eliza at the end of the play about the sort of life she wants to have. The phrase he ended this rant with especially amused me: “If you cant appreciate what youve got, youd better get what you can appreciate” (Shaw, act 5, page 103). It sounds like one of those Yogi Berra-isms, where it seems to make little sense. No matter how much Higgins rambles, though, Eliza is resolute in her judgment of him and does not bend to his will, showing she has finally overcome the power of his words.

Pygmalion Blog 1

Shaw begins Pygmalion with a huge thunderstorm, forcing people of different classes to be huddled together under the protection of a portico. As Shaw was a staunch socialist, this beginning could have served as a message to show his ideological belief in socialism because, just as the people are sharing protection from the thunderstorm, socialism also involves sharing. Shaw subtlely gives his socialist stance a second time with the Freddy character, a little bit after the thunderstorm starts. As Freddy’s mother asks the flower girl how she knows Freddy’s name, she says that was what she would call anyone. This incident brings to our attention that Freddy is just another common name, nothing special, as socialists believe no one is above anyone else.

            It’s funny how the mother and daughter are giving Freddy such a hard time for not being able to find a cab, calling him “helpless” and a “selfish pig” (Shaw 10). After all, it is Freddy who’s doing all the work of trying to find an available cab. While everyone else is safely under protection, he’s out in the storm getting soaked, going to distant places to find a cab for his complaining mother and sister. And when he finally does find one, his mother and sister have already left without him, walking to the bus. Shaw comically reverses the roles of men and women by having the women, the mother and daughter, in control and telling the man, Freddy, what to do, hinting to Shaw’s feminist view.

            After the collision between Freddy and Eliza, Shaw describes Eliza’s physical appearance. This description sets up the reader into wondering how Higgins will ‘work his magic’ and help Eliza pass as a duchess by speaking ‘properly.’ However, Shaw does say that “Her features are no worse than theirs [the ladies]; but their condition leaves something to be desired” (Shaw 11). This explanation gives the reader the notion that there is a definite possibility that Eliza can pass as a duchess, but that she just needs some help, like from Higgins.

"To his Coy Mistress"

The poem “To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell reminds me of the Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Both poems use words like ‘burn,’ ‘rage,’ and ‘fires,’ which bring up strong emotions in readers. When I read Thomas’s poem, it meant to me that someone about to die shouldn’t go down easy, rather they should go down swinging. Just as the Thomas poem says to me that people should try to live even their last moments of life to the fullest, this Marvell poem says something very similar to me—that people should try to live every moment to the fullest, with no regrets.

I like how Marvell starts out his poem with a kind of easy-going tone, lulling the reader with the message, ‘If we had all of the time in the world.’ Then, suddenly, in the last two stanzas of the poem, he changes from a calm tone to a sense of urgency. I thought this transition was moving, and I think Marvell may have intended on ‘setting up’ the reader like that to get jolted into action. If the response Marvell hoped to get from his readers was to be inspired to live life to the fullest, he accomplished it—with me, at least.

Marvell chooses stirring words and phrases that amplify the responses in readers. His phrase at the end of the poem, “And tear our pleasures with rough strife/Thorough the iron gates of life,” made me think of people just having the time of their lives and not wasting time worrying about what other people think (“To his Coy Mistress”). It is phrases like these that make Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress” one of my favorite poems.

Wuthering Heights - Feminist Criticism

The feminist criticism is perhaps the perspective that best applies to Wuthering Heights. For one, any personal possessions of a woman goes straight to the husband once she marries. It’s like the woman doesn’t even exist because she has to live under the husband’s name, who now owns her belongings. Thrushcross Grange would have been Isabella’s had she not married Heathcliff but, since she did marry him, Heathcliff automatically becomes the owner. In addition, the wives of men in the novel are treated at times like they’re below the “man of the house.” One example of this inferior treatment in Wuthering Heights is, again, with Isabella. When Heathcliff beats Isabella, there isn’t much she can do within the law to stop Heathcliff because, in order to make Heathcliff stop physically abusing her, she would have to prove (in a court probably partial towards men) that her life was in danger as a result of the abuse. The law back in Brontë’s day really favored men over women and put women at a great disadvantage.

I think the topic that will garner even more attention from contemporary feminist critics will be “the role of film and other popular media in the construction of the feminine gender” (Brontë 451). I remember the very first article our class blogged on about how people are reading less. With more people now turning to other forms of entertainment like watching movies, the creators of movies add their opinions in them and help shape the public’s ideas. Oftentimes, the public isn’t even aware that the shaping process is occurring. Feminist critics, then, will carefully examine these newer and more popular forms of entertainment and make serious efforts to raise the public’s awareness of underlying patriarchal ideology.

Reading the sentence, “French feminists tended to focus their attention on language, analyzing the ways in which meaning is produced,” reminded me of another article that our class read—the George Orwell article. In that article, Orwell talks about the power of language. Since certain words conjure up certain thoughts in readers, the writer can somewhat control their thoughts by carefully picking and choosing the words he writes down. I definitely think language should be one of the main focuses for feminists or, for that matter, any form of criticism.

            Noticing the paired, opposite terms such as masculine/feminine in the feminist criticism section at the top of page 452 reminds me of deconstruction. It makes me think about how the different categories of criticism aren’t completely separate from each other. It even says later in the section, “Categories obscure similarities even as they help us make distinctions” (Brontë 458). We should try to keep in the back of our minds that categories, while useful in showing differences between things, sometimes overlap and share similarities.

I found Lyn Pykett’s feminist criticism to be very persuasive. I liked her part at the beginning about older Catherine’s different names and that “Catherine Heathcliff remains an unfulfilled possibility, a route not taken, although some would argue that this unoccupied term in fact names Catherine’s true identity, and that she acquires this name-role beyond the narrative when her spirit joins with Heathcliff’s to wander the moors eternally” (Brontë 469). That argument reminded me of a humorous comment one of our classmates, Jessica Guthrie, commented on in her blog when she said, “Would they go on ghostly dates? It is fun to think of the possibilities” (Guthrie, “Wuthering Heights Blog 2”). It is interesting to think about different scenarios, like whether or not older Catherine would return Heathcliff’s forgiveness for his ruthless behavior.

I agree with Pykett’s criticism for the most part, but her discussion of younger Catherine and her choice between two men starting at the bottom of page 475 to the top of 476 didn’t really persuade me. Who’s to say that, without the experience of her first marriage, that younger Catherine would have thrown “Jane Austen’s prudence to the winds” and would have chosen to be with someone for love rather than for a high social status (Brontë 475)? The only reason younger Catherine is able to make the second choice—to be with Hareton—is because her first ‘choice,’ Linton, dies. It would have been very difficult for younger Catherine to leave Linton given the patriarchal law that was established then. Nevertheless, after Linton dies, younger Catherine does choose to go with her true nature and decides to marry Hareton, representing a move towards more freedom for herself.

Wuthering Heights - Marxist Criticism

I can see why many journals are using Marxist terms or models more often. There are people like Bill Gates and Donald Trump who make way more money than they really need. Although many of these rich individuals have worked hard and give away millions to charity and other worthwhile causes, their net worth is still a staggering sum. Journals, like the Wall Street Journal, aren’t advocating a switch from free-market capitalism to communism, rather they’re critiquing the free-market system.

The Marxist critic Pierre Macherey’s comment on page 380 about the purpose and function of more traditional forms of criticism amused me. His view that the more traditional forms of criticism attempt to coax the text “into giving up its true, latent, or hidden meaning” reminded me of the passage from Writing about Literature that talks about the myth of hidden meaning— that there is no such thing as ‘hidden meaning’ in a text (Brontë 380).

For the sentence starting on page 390 with “Finally” and ending on the following page with “changed man,” words such as ‘despicable’ could certainly be added to elaborate on Heathcliff being a changed man. Out of sheer cruelty, Heathcliff dedicated pretty much the rest of his life to exacting revenge on Hindley and everyone else whom he felt had betrayed him.

Reading the paragraph that starts on page 395 and ends on page 396 made me realize that Emily Brontë must have had a rich imagination in order to create such a magnificent work as Wuthering Heights and make it seem so real. It would be hard to disagree that Brontë’s imaginative-filled childhood helped her develop such a talent. As Eagleton says, only someone who “can synchronize in its [a work’s] internal structures the most shattering passion with the most rigorous realist control” can “produce the aesthetically superior work” (Brontë 396).

I agree with Eagleton that the pivotal event of Wuthering Heights is older Catherine’s decision between going with her passion for Heathcliff and having a high social standing with Edgar Linton. By choosing the latter, older Catherine acts as, in Eagleton’s words, “the decisive catalyst of the tragedy” (Brontë 396). After she chooses Edgar Linton, Heathcliff then starts on his own path to decadence and turns into a cruel and ruthless man. Brontë pulls the reader in and allows this chain of events to unfold before our eyes.