Neuromancer excerpts

These excerpts will try to be on the subject of human relationships to technology.

"She held out her hands, palms up, with her white fingers sightly spread, and with a barely audible click, ten double-edged four centimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails." Weapons attached to humans is a deadly advancement which makes life seem more fragile.


"His primary hedge against aging was a yearly pilgrimage to Tokyo, where genetic surgeons reset the code of his DNA, a procedure unavailable in Chiba." (p.12) Paying for eternal youth creates a interesting contrast to todays society where people try to chase the same goals but on a less advanced level.


"Your biochemically incapable of getting off on amphetamine or cocaine". Genetic manipulation and forced drug rehabilitation show technological and social aspects that aren't present in todays society.


"The week before, he'd delayed transfer of a synthetic glandular extract, retailing ir for a wider margin than usual" (p.11) We see that not only are things like this present in this futuristic world but they are peddled by random urban dwellers like an counterfeit good or illegal drug.

"Someone scored a ten-megaton hit on Tank War Europa, a simulated airburst drowning the arcade in a white sound as a lurid hologram fireball mushroomed overhead." (p.17)

"His buyer for three megabytes of hot RAM in the Hitachi wasn't taking any calls." (p.20)

"You need a new pancreas. The one we bought for you frees you from a dangerous dependency." (p.45) This would be normal today if the setting were not considered. A world where this can be a realistic conversations for normal to poor people shows great advancement in medicine followed by the reduction of prices for those services.

"Chinese bloody invented nerve splicing"(p.4)Where organ transplants we can relate to this technological advancement is one we can't really grasp on what it is or how realistic something like this could be.

Neuromancer Setting

Reading Neuromancer I discover that I do not have very much experience with reading science fiction. I am having a hard time learning what rules apply, what we are expected to know and what we learn as we go along. I have been able to pick up some clues to the setting of the novel.

The first paragraph says things like the "sky was the color of a television" and references Japanese quickly tell us that we are on earth and in modern or futuristic Japan and in an urban area. We know that they still speak Japanese and are metroposistic and and big enough of a travel hub to have a bar regularly filled with immigrants. Using just this information we can judge that Case has already lived through some adventures and the story isn't going to be a of an innocent farm boy who goes on an epic adventure but of Case who has a past he must deal with and the events that unfold because of it.

When Gibson talks about video arcades and how commonplace they seem we get the sense that the world is more technologically orientated than todays world and that pop culture is represented largely by the video game culture.

With the speed usage, easy weapon acquisition, and prostitution we can assume that Case is in a slum or bad area of Chiba. This helps us believe that he is on the run and lives the kinda of life where a random person he knows would want him dead. This would be much more unusual and unbelievable he he was living the high life of this huge metropolis and still having people wanting him dead and having to watch his back at all times.

Questioning Creation

Questioning Creation

Robert Frost's Design and William Blake's The Tyger both use animals and nature to argue evolution and against creationism. Both poems ask the question "why?" repetitively in order to get the reader to question his creationist beliefs. The difference lies in which aspect of living things the poets use to question away the reader’s creation beliefs. Frost tries to get the reader to come to the conclusion that while everything is so intricate there is no specific reason for the existence of any one thing and therefore there is no creator behind everything. Blake claims that it is not logical or possible for the same creator to create things so natural, robotic, peaceful and fierce, and that these could only be created through randomness.

Frost begins temporarily masking his anti-creationist agenda by starting Design describing a scene so articulate and metaphorical that it appears that his point is going to be that all of this is designed by a master creator. However when he reaches the volta with "What had that flower to do with being white" he makes us question why would a creator make a flower white. This question is rhetorical and tells us that there is no reason for this occurrence, logical or otherwise and leads us to believe that there was no intended reason for the creation of anything. This then develops into the implication that if there was no reason for the creation of anything then it probably all just came to be without the aid of a creator. The questioning Frost does is his way of directly attacking creationism instead of using subtle implications.

Even Without using questioning Frost ties doubt to creationism in a more subtle manner at the beginning of his poem. Frost obviously chose the spider's capture of the moth for a reason. If his goal was to make all of us in awe of god's creations the scene would be much more tranquil and desirable than the end of the life of one creature at the hands of another. This scene begs the question why would a creator design and bring to life a creature such as a moth solely for it to be captured and devoured by another “creation”. Also, there neither a stated nor implied reason for the spider to be fat or dimpled other than to seem ugly and monstrous while consuming the moth. Frost tells us not of the spider reaching true happiness or teaching us a lesson because of these traits, just that they simply are. This leads us to believe that the spider needs to eat the moth to survive so it does so, not because it is the will of a creator.

In The Tyger Blake tries to make us come to the same conclusion as Frost does and also disguises his true meaning in the beginning. While he starts right from the first stanza asking “What immortal hand or eye Could frame Thy Fearful Symmetry?” it appears although the answer is God, the creator of all. But Blake wanes from creationism in the fourth stanza with questions such as "What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?”. These lines make us compare the natural beauty of a tiger to the cold mechanistic real world, filled with forges, chains, and furnaces. Even though Blake is still talking about the tiger, it poses the question why would a creator create a natural animal with such fierceness and intricacy and have it exist in a world with the industrial things used to describe the tiger. If Blake wants to agree with creationism he would include an answer to all the whys instead of leaving them unanswered which gives us the impression that there is no answer, no reason behind their existence, and therefore no creator.

Blake's line "Did He who make the lamb make thee?" poses to us the question how could two animals so incredibly different be created by the same hands. The lamb is known as a symbol of innocence and purity and the tiger is a symbol of aggression, fear and power. We are forced to wonder why and how a creator would and could create two beings so different and seemingly uncoexistable. The last line of the poem differs from the first line by changing “could” to “dare”. This seemingly small change magnifies how scary and unpredictable the tiger is and implies that nobody who was designing a world, specifically a world where man was to live would create such a threat. Either the creator is daring man to defeat it or there is no creator and the tiger is just another random being wandering the planet. Because Blake spends a large portion of the poem dehumanizing the tiger the final line implies that Blake indeed believes that there is no creator because no creator would create such a beast.

In both Frost’s Design and Blake’s The Tyger the authors using questioning to generate doubts about the validity of creationism and the existence of a creator. Both poems begin without directly denouncing it and glide in to more resonating questions as the poems develop. They differ in that Design questions why would a creator bother with such detail and The Tyger questions how could a creator design a creature so unnatural and mechanical but both adequately place doubt into the accepted beliefs of the time.

NatureAnimalsCreationismFrostBlake imo

Robert Frost's Design and William Blake's The Tyger both use animals and nature to argue evolution and against creationism. Both poems ask the question "why?" repetitively in order to get the reader to question his creationist beliefs. Frost tries to get the reader to come to the conclusion that while everything is so intricate there is no specific reason for the existence of any one thing and therefore there is no creator behind everything. Blake tries to reach the same conclusion but by claiming that it is not logical or possible for the same creator to create things so natural, robotic, peaceful and fierce, and that these could only be created by randomness.

When Frost reaches the volta with "What had that flower to do with being white" he is making us question why would a creator make a flower white. This tells us that there is no reason for this logical or otherwise and leads us to believe that there was no intended reason for the creation of anything. This then develops into if there was no reason for the creation of anything then it probably all just came to be without the aid of a creator. Without using questioning Frost also ties doubt to creationism in the start of his poem. Frost obviously chose the spider's capture of the moth for a reason. If his goal was to make all of us in awe of god's creation the scene would be much more tranquil and desirable than the end of the life of one creature at the hands of another. There is no stated or implied reason for the spider to be fat or dimpled. He tells us not of the spider reaching true happiness or teaching us a lesson because of these traits, they simply are. This leads us to believe that the spider needs to each the moth to survive so it does so, not because it is the will of a creator.

Blake tries to make us come to the same conclusion as Frost does but does so in every stanza. Blake really starts to wane from creationism in the fourth stanza with lines such as "What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?". These lines make us compare the natural beauty of a tiger to the cold mechanistic world with forges, chains, and furnaces. Even though Blake is still talking about the tiger, it poses the question why would a creator create a natural animal with such fierceness and intricacy and have it exist in a world with the industrial things used to describe the tiger. If Blake wanted to agree with creationism he would include an answer to all the whys instead of leaving them unanswered giving us the impression that there is no answer, no reason, and no creator. Blake's line "Did He who make the lamb make thee?" poses us the question of why would two animals so incredibly different by created by the same hands. The lamb is a symbol of innocence and purity and the tiger is a symbol of aggression, fear and power and therefore there is no common link between to two.

Bruce Wayne

Sinister's piece on Bruce Wayne was an interesting read. I felt that he drew me into the work by referencing batman and getting me to root for Bruce to be a better man becasue i've seen it in the comics and movies. If there was no super hero alternate universe connection we would be blaming bruce for his position in life and faulting his mistakes. Instead we wait for him to do something heroic and prove that it isn't just money that allows Bruce to be so awesome.

The reason the piece doesn't seem literary is the form it comes it. If it claims to be a poem it is the black sheep of that family and as far as prose I don't know if it a excerpt, a short stroy or the synopsis of a novel on the topic. By not being very comparable to other forms of literature it seems less literary. The adding of Bruce Wayne makes it less literary if it affects that at all. This is because it speeds up the read because we are instantly attached to the character we already know and love so we rush though to find out what happens instead of taking the time to examine each image and word choice.

What I really like about the piece is how much the meaning is changed just because of the name of the character. This scene would read quite different if we didn't expect Bruce to change into a superhero at any moment. Even with mentioning superheros the same story about John Doe instead of bruce wayne would recieve a very different response.

HP

Good luck my friend, a wizard so unique
Famous and lone since before you could walk
Your heart and love defeats any technique

It seems your scar will always prompt a shriek
What lies beneath will give the dark a shock
Good luck my friend, a wizard so unique

You must stand strong and help us guard the meek
When he who shall not be named comes to knock
Your heart and love defeats any technique

While books lead may me to the spells I seek
In only your gut did you er take stock
Good luck my friend, a wizard so unique

Opon a broom you always have been sleek
Soaring around the pitch like would a hawk
Your heart and love defeats any technique

But for you or him the future looks bleak
Aong your side i'll fight so the grim won't knock
Good luck my friend, a wizard so unique
Your heart and love defeats any technique

I Dwell in Possibility

"I dwell in Possibility" by Emily Dickson features a lot of dashes that add a different angle to the poem. I feel to discover what the dashes do to the poem we must examine the inconsistencies.

Nearly every line of the poem ends in a dash and there are only two lines that do not and three lines that have a dash mid-line. The dash in line four between "Superior" and "for Doors" makes me believe that the dashes are pauses in the writing instead of connections. Dickinson would not claim that her realm is better than that of prose followed by a poem connecting nearly every line like a chunk of prose would. A line Superior for doors would imply that what was said prior would be more beneficial for doors so i cannot see why a dash would connect those two words together. I therefore led to believe that "Superior" is referring to the abundance of windows. The other two dashes mid-line involve describing the visitors and her occupation in her realm and a pause is the only way for the line to make sense by creating almost a question and answer feeling to the final stanza.

The first line without a dash at the end "And for an Everlasting Roof" further strengthens by belief that the lack of dash connects the last line as the gambrels of the sky is clearly referring to the roof. The other lack of dash to end a line completes the phrase of what the hands are gathering.

Poetic Imagery

In Hermans' Casabianca the image most prominently shown is that of fire. References of fire or flames occur throughout the poem creating a sense of urgency and importance of the situation. While the story of the disaster on the ship is being told it is constantly being interrupted by fire and flames to emphasize the heat of the moment.

I feel Hermans uses the fire to represent to passion that the son is showing, both of love for his father and willingness to risk himself to do what needs to be done. The images created are almost like those of a modern day movie in a scene where heroic music would be playing and out of a scene of pain and terror shines one bright light, that of the sun that will not leave the ship without his father. As the poem goes on and the flames wrap around the ship the image grips us in a way more common to prose where we must read on and find out what happens to our hero as it develops a bond between him and the reader.

The fire changes the scene from being depressed and somber and of mourning to that of a hero not giving up and admitting defeat. If the ship were merely going down because of holes there should be much less jeopardy and the poem would be about wishing his father would not die and reminiscing of they times together. The constant threatening fire Hermans describes however forces the reader to worry about the hero and his current safely and not about how he will cope with the loss of his father.

This was my favorite poem so far because it seemed like Hermans wanted to to want to read and enjoy her poem instead of just analyze it and extract some hidden meaning through interpretation of secret images.