It sounds like you've got a great paper going. But I'm concerned about the stark division you make between classifications of "human" and "animal," maybe because mankind can be considered "the human animal." It's only a semantic point, but I think that in acknowledging the hairsplit between monkey and man, beast and boy could finesse your ideas.
I love the direction that your thesis took us in, but structuring your analyses of "He" and "Holiday" as a moralizing effort on Porter's part makes her stories sound like a fable or parable, which doesn't really do them justice. I think that Porter absolutely is engaging in "lesson-teaching", but choosing such a specific take-home message for these ambiguous stories sounds like a hard fight to win.
Overall, I think you've done great work. You incorporated your research well and have a clear understanding of "He." Nice job!
I really liked your idea about Porter portraying characters as animalistic due to their silence and showing the difference between the silent character and the other character. Especially in "He" I think that is a very important distinction to make, that the silence "He" makes shows more emotion.
Also with that linguistics case I was telling you about, there are a few and they are specifical done with feral children, two that are more well known though are "Genie" and "Victor of Averyon", but there really are a lot of studies with linguitics and speaking done with all of them. I just thought it might help since these non-speaking humans are outcasted from society, much like "He" was from his family. Also another similar situation that happens with Genie is that she is so different that her mother or her adopted families can not understand or deal with her so they keep transfering her from home to home.
Another thing that you may want to look into but I'm not too sure if it would help would be the reseach done on primates with sign language and speaking because athropologically primates do not have a specific part of the brain that allows them to speak or even hear specific words, the Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the brain.
But I think your presetation and thesis sound really good and I think you have a lot of imformation to work with as well, but maybe those things might help.
This was a very thought-provoking paper, Jessica. Your notions of silence and how the dominant culture feels it is dehumanizing kept making me think of Lacan. I am not sure if you want to incorporate any theory into this, but I think you could.
Granted, Lacan was talking about childhood development, but being a language speaker/user is a necessity to enter into the Symbolic or adult realm, according to Lacan, and I think you could do a lot with this, considering that as you have pointed out today, most of the family members of these silent characters really push them out of the community.
You also mentioned how the silent character is not named and how that is significant. I agree, but there are many other characters crafted by Porter that are not named. I think maybe you could mention that. Granted, I wouldn't want it to take the paper in a different direction, but maybe you could look at those other characters not named... why are their names not presented, are they being dehumanized as well? etc. but great job!
3 comments:
It sounds like you've got a great paper going. But I'm concerned about the stark division you make between classifications of "human" and "animal," maybe because mankind can be considered "the human animal." It's only a semantic point, but I think that in acknowledging the hairsplit between monkey and man, beast and boy could finesse your ideas.
I love the direction that your thesis took us in, but structuring your analyses of "He" and "Holiday" as a moralizing effort on Porter's part makes her stories sound like a fable or parable, which doesn't really do them justice. I think that Porter absolutely is engaging in "lesson-teaching", but choosing such a specific take-home message for these ambiguous stories sounds like a hard fight to win.
Overall, I think you've done great work. You incorporated your research well and have a clear understanding of "He." Nice job!
I really liked your idea about Porter portraying characters as animalistic due to their silence and showing the difference between the silent character and the other character. Especially in "He" I think that is a very important distinction to make, that the silence "He" makes shows more emotion.
Also with that linguistics case I was telling you about, there are a few and they are specifical done with feral children, two that are more well known though are "Genie" and "Victor of Averyon", but there really are a lot of studies with linguitics and speaking done with all of them. I just thought it might help since these non-speaking humans are outcasted from society, much like "He" was from his family. Also another similar situation that happens with Genie is that she is so different that her mother or her adopted families can not understand or deal with her so they keep transfering her from home to home.
Another thing that you may want to look into but I'm not too sure if it would help would be the reseach done on primates with sign language and speaking because athropologically primates do not have a specific part of the brain that allows them to speak or even hear specific words, the Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the brain.
But I think your presetation and thesis sound really good and I think you have a lot of imformation to work with as well, but maybe those things might help.
This was a very thought-provoking paper, Jessica. Your notions of silence and how the dominant culture feels it is dehumanizing kept making me think of Lacan. I am not sure if you want to incorporate any theory into this, but I think you could.
Granted, Lacan was talking about childhood development, but being a language speaker/user is a necessity to enter into the Symbolic or adult realm, according to Lacan, and I think you could do a lot with this, considering that as you have pointed out today, most of the family members of these silent characters really push them out of the community.
You also mentioned how the silent character is not named and how that is significant. I agree, but there are many other characters crafted by Porter that are not named. I think maybe you could mention that. Granted, I wouldn't want it to take the paper in a different direction, but maybe you could look at those other characters not named... why are their names not presented, are they being dehumanized as well? etc. but great job!
Post a Comment