Sunday, November 25, 2012

Advertisements

This commercial uses pathos, by manipulating emotions to promote the product. It does not give much ethos, persuasion through authority, or logos, persuasion through facts.

This one uses pathos, by showing the children eating cake, supposed to stimulate emotion, and logos, telling of how cutting and shaving will be unnecessary to make the cake.

This advertisement uses pathos, by talking about how women will be attracted to the cigarette, and then you, and also by, in the description box, describing the flavours excessively.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Opinion


Women should never be treated this way, and it is outrageous how much discrimination still goes on in the world, despite all the progress we've supposedly come to. The reason I think that things like this still happen today is because of the material conditions that cause fundamentalism to rise in third world countries. Feminism is an important movement which, I think, attempts to combat discrimination. I would like to comment on what many people are saying, which basically equates religion to fundamentalism, and says that if religion didnt exist these types of things wouldnt happen. That is blatantly incorrect, and evidently there are places where religion is widely practiced where this doesn't happen. 

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Persepolis: The Dowry


In this last chapter Marjane gets expelled from school for arguing and attacking a teacher. This persuades her parents to send her to Austria. Marjane is then seen leaving to the airport, and this is the last scene of the book. I made a connection by thinking of a girl I knew who went to a boarding school in Vienna in 7th grade. I remember that she was really scared of going, and didn't really want to go, but her parents for some reason were forcing her.

Persepolis: The Passport

The chapter begins in a point where Marjane is growing up. We are introduced to Taher, a sick man who becomes even more ill after a heart attack. This means that he must have open heart surgery. The difficulty of getting a passport legally makes the wife eventually have to resort to fake passports, though he did not leave on time, as his passport was delayed. I can relate this to the difficulty of getting a visa to Saudi Arabia, shallow as that reference may be. I remember that it took around 5 months to get the visa to enter the country, even though my father already lived and worked there and the company was government owned. 

Persepolis: The Sheep



In this chapter Anoosh and Marjane form a friendship. Anoosh becomes the person which Marjane looks up to and admires. I can make a connection to other mentor-student or guardian-child relationships in books. For example, in Harry Potter, the main character and Dumbledore become close "friends", but the relationship in reality is that of a companion and a child. Also, in Leon (The Professional), in which there is a girl who wants to become an assassin, there is the same type of relationship. 

Persepolis: The Veil

  The first chapter of Persepolis sets the introduction and starts leading the audience to a potential situation that can take place. It starts off by introducing the main character and what she is living through. The chapter closes by showing how the main character desires to become the last prophet of her religion.  This little girl is born in the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. She is obliged to wear a veil over her hair, and is soon separated from her friends at school. Afterwards, she starts thinking of a way to pursue her dream of becoming the last prophet. She has a holy book, and has long talks with God at night. By reading this chapter I came up with several questions, including: What is her name? When does this story take place? Why are the obligated to wear a vail? What does this vail represent? Why does she want to be a prophet when she grows up? When she 'chats' with God at night, is it her imagination or is it really God? Will this book relate to us her experiences with the religion? Due to the fact that it was a short chapter, we couldn't receive a lot of information and therefore I don't have  as many doubts about how the story begins. My last question is, what is going to come up next?

The first chapter of Persepolis takes us to Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The time period is one that is chaotic, during the Cold War. The narrator, which is the author herself, Marjane Satrapi, is raised at a very young age as a proletariat-loving revolutionary, by her parents who are the same way. She also believes that she is the last prophet of her religion. When she is forced to wear a veil over her head, she comes to dislike it. I came up with several questions, including


  • What does the veil represent for the women of Iran?
  • What is her connection to God?
  • How does the time and place she is living in affect her childhood?
  • How does her childhood compare to, say, an American girl?

Persepolis: Chapter Persepolis

I can relate the story of the man who was called a martyr to urban legends and/or mass hysteria. Usually, because of the carelessness in relating a story, or some kind of condition which has made people vulnerable to suggestion or mentally traumatized, someone will begin to say something or do something, and because of suggestion or trauma everyone will believe it. The fact that the woman had no proof that the man was a martyr and simply announced it reinforces this. The situation was, obviously, the political instability at the time. 

Monday, September 10, 2012

Reading Blog- Tablet XI

Tablet XI is one of the longer tablets. It relates the conversation between Utnapishtim and Gilgamesh. 

Gilgamesh asks Utnapishtim how he became immortal, he himself wanting to become immortal. Utnapishtim's story and the story of Noah's Ark are quite similar, with both having the command of a deity for a man to build an arc to save himself and animals from a flood. 

I have a bad feeling about characters looking for immortality. If we look towards other stories of characters defeating death, such as the Pardoner's Tale, which ends up with all characters, who attempted to cheat death, dead themselves. However, possibly there is a happy ending.



Wednesday, September 5, 2012

What Happens To You When You Die?


In my opinion, you simply die. I don't believe in an afterlife, simply because there is no proof of it. I believe that your body and conciousness simply stop working and disintegrate.
 

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Reading Blog- Tablets VI-VII

The story of a goddess falling in love with a mortal reminds me of how King Kong falls in love with a woman, who is much weaker than him.

The sickness of Enkidu brought by the gods, and the sadness of Gilgamesh, reminds me of the death of Patroklos at the hands of the Greek gods, and the sadness of Achilles.


Reading Blog- Tablets IV and V of the Epic of Gilgamesh

I sometimes feel like Gilgamesh. When he begins the journey to slay Huwawa, he is confident, however as he progresses, with the contribution of morbid, dark dreams, he loses confidence. I sometimes accept tasks with a certainty that I can do them, but then lose confidence when I realize I may not be able to accomplish the task or when I observe things that may point to my inability to do a task.

The journey of Gilgamesh and Enkidu reminds me of the journey undertaken by Frodo and Sam in the Lord of the Rings.

The 13 winds which assault Huwawa make me think of the association of the number 13 with bad luck, evil, and pestilence.

The final attempts Huwawa made to convince Gilgamesh to spare him reminded me of the temptation which the ring gave in the Lord of the Rings before its destruction.

The use of the head of Huwawa as a trophy reminded me of Perseus, who kept Medusa's head after slaying her.


Reading Blog- Tablets I-III of the Epic of Gilgamesh

The character of Gilgamesh reminds me very much of another great warrior, Achilles, and his counterpart, Enkidu, reminds me of Achilles' good friend, Patroklos, although I understand the nature of the relationship is quite different.

I think shepherd is a word that is important to define. In its literal form, it means a person who tends and rears sheep, but it is used metaphorically, in the same manner as it has been used in texts such as the Bible, as the Messiah, the leader of the people, a term used when describing Jesus of Nazareth, and uttered when the old men of Uruk asked the gods whether Gilgamesh was truly their saviour.

The description of the creation of Enkidu reminds me very much of the creation of man outlined in Genesis, where clay is used to make a being made in the very image of God.

The man who spots the hairy beast Enkidu reminds me of people who have sighted a sasquatch, bigfoot, or other mythical creatures.

At this point in the story, I am wondering how a friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu will form.

The account of the harlot conquering and wooing the hairy beast reminds me of the story of King Kong, in which a beautiful woman tames a wild beast.

The descriptions are repeated many times, i.e. the description of Enkidu was repeated a few times, as well as that of the Cedar Forest and Huwawa, with some variations. This vaguely resembles a kind of mantra, in which the exact wording is used to describe an entity, as if it were part of it's title.


Thursday, August 23, 2012

Picture Inferences



This picture is of a poppy field in Afghanistan.

Inferences


  • They are destroying the poppy fields, because of the position of the sticks
  • They are policemen, because of the way their clothes look
  • The poppy fields were being used to make heroin, because of the amount of poppy and the policemen destroying the fields