Orwell : Politics and the English Language

Okay so as i was reading through this article about Orwell at first i was a little confused i'll admit but as i continued to read the article i began to understand it more and more. I thought that Orwell was crazy at first trying to get people to change the way we speak and write, society is becoming more modern and people cannot help but change with the times. But then i realized he had a point, the way that people are speaking now is hiding the meaning of what maybe is really ment to be said. It would be alot of work to try and figure out the true meaning and then the word of eacho word you are to write down, but that is what writing should be like. Politics started this by because Politicians cannot bluntly say what they truley mean, so they leave it up to vague metaphors so people come up with their own meanings rather then the one original meaning that it was meant in. So to sum up this blog i no longer think that Orwell is nuts i believe that he has a point, but it probably will not make a difference seeing as society is becoming lazier and lazier i cannot see them taking more time and effort and creating new metaphors to make their writing more specific and with less room to manuver around different meanings.

Casey!

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Announcement II-21-07

Folks,

  I've added another very interesting website for discussion next week. Please see the main course site http://cust100-notes.blogspot.com/ for details. Hope your break is going well!

Cheers & Best,

Michael

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Symbolism In Animal Farm

There are a number of symbols in the noval used in a sort of satire way, and Orwell has a way of embodying the ideas he intends to communicate. Some of them are related to humans and the evil they represent to the animals (whips, walking on two legs). Some other symbols have to do with exculsively the life in the society of animal farm such as the green flag and the windmill. The windmill as several meanings it seems, it represents in Snowball's eyes, then it comes to stand for the conlict between Snowball and Napolean, and then it represents what the animals must defend against the human enemy. Objects such as the windmill take on meaning only because they are shown to be imporatnt in the reality he is depicting in the novel. Orwell never seems to fall into the poor use of symbolism.


Casey

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Animal Farm and Children

After watching Animal Farm in last class it made me
think how much the movie was not made for children.
However they may be some intelligent children out there who may pick up on the underlining messasges. Movies today, also seem to target two audiences; adults and children for example the movie Shrek contains serveral comments that are not inteneded for children, the line "he must be compensating for something" is cleary intended for the adult audience . Although Animal Farm was some what inapropriate
I beleive that children of today would understand it and enjoy the violence,
just like the enjoyment of the subliminal messages in the movie Shrek.

Ashley!

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Animal Farm and Children

I do agree with some of the points that Cassey made on how children would perceive animal farm. I agree that children would not get all the concepts, ideas, images and meanings behind the movie. (Such as dark = evil) However I believe that the children would understand some of the main points of the movie, such as you can get more done working together. Or communism is bad, dicatatorship is bad. (Not in those terms but they's get the idea) I believe that now a days, a movie like this would be acceptable for children to watch and I don't think they would be scared by it. Some of the things the children watch today are pretty violence. Take some Disney movies for example. Both the Lion King and Aladan have some violent seens in it. Main characters dye and some of the same issues are presented. In the Lion King what's his name (evil lion) becomes the ruler of the land. He is depicted as a diactator and his reign is sorta like communism in the way that the lower classes of animals get nothing and he gets everything. So that's my rant for the week... I hope it makes sense! Have a good reading week Gang!
Melissa

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Animal Farm Video

This week we watched the movie Animal Farm and in the tutorial a question that came up was "do you think this movie was made for childeren as well"? Well i believe that this movie would not have the same impacts on a child as it would on a adult. Children would probably be more frightened by this movie more then anything, instead of understanding the meaning of it. For example when the head honcho pig is black , he turns black because hes evil and evil coorespondes with dark colours. Something like this a child would understand to only a certain degree, i think that sub-consciencely the children would understand the relation between darkness and evil but the meaning would not be clear. So no i do not believe that this movie should be for children I think the impact of this movie is much stronger if you are able to understand all angles of it.

Casey

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Alice in wonderland

When I left class last week... I kept on thinking about the play. I thought how the location really did fit with the play and it's concepts. It wouldn't have been as personal and had as much of an effect if it was performed at say the princess of whales. The environment really made me have to use my imagination and I found that I was more focussed during the play for that reason.

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Remakin history...

I have to agree with katie tawny and natasha. When certain events happen in history, for example 9/11, everyone can remember what they were doing and where they were at that time. For myself, i was in class in grade 8. My experience of it would be completely different from those who were actually present at the twin towers. I can say that i was said, but i my eperience wasn't as bad as those who had family there or were there themselves.

So if i was to compare my version of that day to a police officers who was there, ther ewould be 2 different experiences.

So in the end...
I think being there as opposed to just hearing about it also makes the difference...

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