Essay On Sontag

Every time you try something new or confront something that makes us anxious. This new experience becomes familiar and you lose the fear to do it. By this we can accomplish new challenges in our life and cope better to unfamiliar situations.

Many futuristic texts depict grim and bleak worlds, yet there is often hope contained within the text. In ‘1984’ this hope is shown through his dream of the “Golden Country”, and through the characters of Emmanuel Goldstein and the anonymous Prole woman. Unfortunately all these sources of hope are systematically and ruthlessly destroyed by Orwell. In Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’ the only source of hope is a quick fix solution that will inevitably fail, and cause the need of yet another quick fix solution. Even though many futuristic texts contain undercurrents of hope, these sources of hope are either eventually annihilated by the author, or once researched deeper are not really a source or hope at

The poem “Sonrisas”by Pat Mora is a known poem, about a bicultural woman who finds herself living in two separate worlds, she stands in the middle of a doorway because she can't seem to fit into either one of the worlds being a bicultural character. Pat Mora, the author, is a successful poet who was born in El Paso Texas, she grew up being the oldest of 4 children in a bicultural home. Pat was a former teacher, university administrator, museum director, and consultant. She's a popular writer who promotes creativity and individuality and also incorporates it in her writings. Mora uses metaphors, onomatopoeias, assurance, and imagery to describe

Sontag believes that photography limits the understanding of the world however, contrary to this claim, I believe that photography does not limit the understanding of the world, but rather enhances it.

    There are many reasons why we are fearful but one of these reasons can be solely just because we are expecting something bad to happen. In the story “House Taken Over” by Julio Cortázar, he sets it in Buenos Aires (1946) right after World War II when Argentina was allied against Hitler. During this time, Irene and her brother’s home was being invaded and they ran

As you have read war is a very different type of world everything is turned around and it confuses people. The author of the book The Things They Carried and the writer of the quote "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories. Wrote about war so people could have a better understanding of

Anxiety stems from your mind worrying about possible future events or reminiscing over past events. Anxiety makes us believe that dreadful

Sontag’s essay “Regarding the Pain of Others” expresses humanities’ obsessive nature to images of pain and suffering. The TV screen turns on. We see footage of Syrian refugees suffering by the hands of chemical warfare. They are helpless. The viewer, knowing he cannot do anything in his power to help, continues to watch as the chemicals are released into the air causing the deaths of thousands of civilians. This “appetite for sights of degradation and pain and mutilation” (97) is caused by the “love of mischief” (98) humans feel when they watch atrocities take place. These gruesome images are watched to create a sense of numbness in the viewer. Today, “mayhem is entertaining” (101) to the eyes of modern culture. Sontag pinpoints that people only care about themselves with a misguided view of “how is this affecting me” rather than the ordeals of others to whom it would easily affect. Generally, we are less responsive or sensible to horrors that we constantly see often such as images of war or chaos. Sontag tells us that an “unwillingness to engage with these premonitory images of nearby war was an expression of helplessness and fear” (100) which results in a “bored, cynical, apathetic” (101) perspective of the situation. There is no hope to end suffering and pain unless the viewer takes action to help change the situation for those facing atrocities on the other side of the TV. We can either stay content in our mass culture of violence through “films, television, comics, and computer games” (100) or we can rise up and use compassion to overcome the hardships of atrocities we see.

One way the authors show they are against war is the clash of generations. During the book we see that the younger and older generations have very different views of the war. The younger generation (mostly college students) felt the need to run off and join the war to become the hero they have always dreamed about. The older generation feels as though it is foolish to try to start a war and feel the need to hide and protect themselves. On page 10 it talks about how many college students left to go fight for the war and came back only to brag. On page 6 it talks about the adults opinions on how the war should be handled. Both sides are brought up on the book a significant amount of times making it one of the three biggest themes. The authors feel as though there is a clash of generations during the war showing that they are against the war.

Tim O’Brien uses literary devices such as Imagery and repetition to show how conflict affects humanity. It changed the way they think to care for what they have and the time they have with the people they care for. In the book it says “And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about special way thar dawn spreads out on a river when you must cross the river and march into the mountain and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen” (81). It’s telling us that you should care for what you have and the memories and the sorrows.

Humans present in both Old Man’s War and Ender’s Games have changed due to the technophilic world they are accustomed to by heavily relying on technology. Changes provided by the authors in the novels are the value of human and other species life, violence as an immediate response to possible danger, and character behavior development. In both novels, humanity is able to achieve a great “accomplishment” although these accomplishments seem to lure humanity into the wrong direction leading to the road of destruction due to the cause of their own technological violent and brutal uses. The first way in which change is perceived is through the value of life in all species.

In modern times, youth and beauty is an image seen everywhere. For example, a Versace billboard, magazine ad, TV commercial, all of which displays images of beautiful people. But what happens when this beauty fades? Shakespeare in his 12th sonnet talks about his experience and fading beauty. The purpose of this poem is to encourage a young man to not lose his beauty to the ravages of time. In order to do this, one must reproduce so beauty will live.

The culture that creates the battle school and the need to be defended by the IF is one that knows only the “Death and suffering and terror” (25) the buggers can cause. The people of earth feel this way so deeply because to them the buggers are varelse, and as such the human populous is powerless to feel any other way.

Edgar Allen Poe's "Sonnet- to Science" is an example of how the structure of a poem can both aid and hinder the poet in communicating his or her thoughts. Usually, when the poet chooses to structure his poem in the form of a sonnet, he is, through his speaker, asking a question and reaching an answer. In this poem, however, the speaker, probably a young poet, questions Science but reaches no conclusion. Poe uses the English sonnet to communicate his youthful speaker's feelings of disdain for science and facts as opposed to mythology and fantasy, which inspire poetic musings. He implores Science as to why "she" must impose her "dull realities" on the hearts of poets like himself, squelching their

I was fortunate to have parents that Rogers would say showed me unconditional love. Because of this, I feel that I can get past obstacles and rough times because I know that I am worthy of love, regardless. I also I agree that experiences that threaten people's views of themselves cause anxiety. If I feel that I am doing good in a class and feel like I've been working hard and using my brain's potential and then I get a failing grade on a test or assignment, I feel anxious. I thought that I was doing good, and now I don't know what to think. My self-concept is threatened. A natural defense is to blame the teacher, or the test, or make excuses for myself because I don't like to have my self-concept threatened.