I Am You: The Misrecognized Post-Structuralist Subject

The focus of this story is laid out upon the child who is kept in the damp room in a basement without windows. This child is is filthy and devoid of any sunlight in the room being removed from any social contact. Even so, some of the citizens come and peer at the child to see who brings them a sort of joy and comfort in their lives. “Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children...depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (Le Guin). While adults accept the situation with the child, little children come feeling rage and shock as well as consider how to help the imprisoned. Because of this, they feel despair and compassion for him. However, they can not exchange their beautiful lives in the community for the sake of one child.

In a desperate attempt to keep the Tomkey’s from stealing his candy, the speaker eats as much of it as possible, destroying the rest until his mother walks in. She demands that her son look at himself. The speaker describes this request as a trick to redirect the angry feelings he experiences towards the Tomkey family on himself. However, the speaker acknowledges the unappealing, animal-like image he creates in desperately shoving candy into his mouth despite being allergic to chocolate. The fact that the speaker feels his mother’s words are a trick shows that his behavior convicts him, albeit slightly. Often, when someone asks to look at ourselves in response to a situation in which negative emotions such as anger or hate are involved, we find it easier to blame another individual instead. Instead, refusing to reflect on one’s self in such an instance only causes negative feelings to fester. Thus, in the speaker’s case, it is much easier to simply turn the negative feelings he has about his own life towards the Tomkeys. As the speaker admits, it is easier to simply hate the Tomkey family, going as far as to claim he finds pleasure in doing so. This hatred is evident at the end of this excerpt. Just when the reader suspects a catharsis, or at least an acknowledgement that the Tomkey family does not deserve to be hated, the speaker simply tosses the idea of self- reflection aside. Instead, he delves back into the television’s distractions. This happening reinforces the idea of simply keeping the focus on others flaws instead of one’s own problems. Rather than considering the possibility of being in the wrong for his actions, the speaker lashes out towards something as petty as the costumes the Tomkey children were wearing. If the speaker would have turned inward, perhaps he would

In Meditation Two of René Descartes’ Meditation on First Philosophy, he notes the sight of “men crossing the square.” This observation is important as Descartes states, “But what do I see aside from hats and clothes, which could easily hide automata? Yet I judge them to be men.” This is an important realization as Descartes argues that instead of purely noticing the men through sight, it is actually “solely with the faculty of judgement,” the mind, that perceives and concludes that the thing wearing a hat and clothes are men. I argue that this view of the outside world by Descartes is incomplete as his idea of “I” is faulty, as well as having a misunderstanding on the importance of the senses.

The focus of this story is laid upon the child who is kept in the damp room without windows in a basement. He is filthy and devoid of any sunlight in the room being removed from any social contact. On the contrary, some of the citizens come and peer at the child to see who brings them a sort of joy and comfort in their lives. “Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children...depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (Guin 3). While adults accept the situation with the child, little children come feeling rage and shock as well as considering how to help the imprisoned. At this stage, they feel despair and compassion to him; however, they can not exchange their beautiful life for the sake of one child.

Methods and Meditations on First Philosophy is a discourse by Rene Descartes, which largely focuses on the nature of humanity and divinity. This essay is a discussion of this discourse, and will summarize, explain and object to various parts of his work. The majority of this essay focuses on Descartes Sixth Meditation, which includes his argument that corporeal things do exist.

As conformity becomes ever more common within a society, individuals isolate themselves, but only because the conformists have lost their ability to reflect on their decisions. Similarly, while Bernard and Lenina watch the sea in peace, he makes comments about individuality and its benefits, which startles Lenina, who exclaims, “And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be a part of the social body? After all, every one works for everyone else” (Huxley 91). Here, Lenina is absolutely shocked that Bernard would not want to be with everyone else. However, the sole reason why people only want to conform is that they cannot begin to express their own thoughts and feelings. A person’s individuality is what sets them apart from the rest of society, and when taken away, they become generic. Even though conforming can cause a lot of problems in a person, they are able to agree with a group of people and are able to convey ideas clearly as well as not feel left out. Furthermore, in the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula Le Guin, there are many examples of conformity when it comes to witnessing the child that is responsible for the “happiness” in

Oliver Sacks in “The Mind’s Eye” and Azar Nafisi “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran.” both touch upon how people do not choose the life they live; therefore one’s life is shaped using their own experiences and imagination. The mind plays a major role in how individuals create their own identity. As people grow both physically and mentally, their experiences and imaginations also expand into letting them picture the world in their own perspective. From the blind to those who are controlled by the Iranian government, personal characteristics are the attributes in which we can personalize ourselves. The ever-changing world may create multiple challenges for those trying to shape their identity, but all must remember that we are in control of what our minds take in and let

Growing up in a home with parents of different backgrounds and beliefs can be tough on a child, especially when a child is expected to fulfill both their mother’s and father’s dreams. In addition, more pressure is added when the surrounding environment of a child brings confusion to what they have known and their self-identity. As seen through the protagonist, Antonio Marez, in Rudolfo Anaya’s novel, he is under the pressure of making his parents proud while discovering who he truly is as a person.

As the people of Omelas continued to accept the truth of their city, some have begun to see the child as more of an it than a person and regarded the child similar to a wild animal. “One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes” (245). Not only do the residents accept the child’s misery, they have also

Edelman’s main target is the all-pervasive ‘figure of the child’ which he argues that the image of the child in other terms is the ‘fascism of the baby’s face’ (Edelman, 2004: 75). For Edelman, this signifies concerns as politics as a whole. In effect, ‘we are no more able to conceive of a politics without a fantasy of the future than we are able to conceive of a future without the figure of the Child’ (Edelman, 2004: 11). Thus, Edelman argues that the child, which are seen as innocent in need of protection from the world. The figure of the child is so virtuous it is other individual’s responsibility to fight for a better future them in order for them to live the best possible life. Edelman contends that the idealised child (figure of the child) has, in fact, developed the systematising

In this essay, I will be explaining John Locke’s case of the prince and the cobbler and Bernard Williams’s second description of the A-body person and the B-body person. Bernard Williams has the correct analysis of the situation where the body is part of self-identity since it is inevitable for us to fear future pain.

They do not perceive the external world as separate from themselves. The child then goes through the mirror stage, as indicated by Lacan, around the ages of six to eighteen months. At this point, the child begins to notice that there is a separation between herself and her surroundings. He may begin to play with his feet, and notice himself as an individual being. Before this point, he is in equipoise with the environment. This means that one of the most profound stages of a person’s life involves a sense of loss – the realization that there is a distinct boundary between him and the external world. This boundary reveals an existence of a separation of the self from others; an alienation that can fester and induce feelings of hatred.

At the beginning of Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz compares periods of change and growth in a nation to that of an adolescent developing a sensibility of his own being. “He is astonished at the fact of this being and this astonishment leads to reflection: as he leans over the river of his consciousness, he asks himself if the face that appears there, disfigured by the water, is his own…eventually these features are seen as a face, and later as…a meaning, a history” (9-10). “To become aware of our history,” he explains, “is to become aware of out singularity” (10). With this newly found self-consciousness, the nation continues, better able to understand its own actions and its relation to the surrounding world.

The Human Condition, or La condition humaine was two paintings created by Rene Magritte, one in 1933 and the other in 1935. Both contain many formal similarities, yet the main point of the painting is that there is a painting of a landscape, yet that painting perfectly fits with, or completes, the landscape, as if it was perfectly drawn. In this analysis, I will be analyzing Magritte’s first painting, made in 1933. Magritte’s works often include objects hiding behind others, such as with Magritte’s The Son of Man, where a man in a bowler hat is hiding his face behind a floating apple. Magritte does this also in the Human Condition, yet to express a different meaning. Magritte is one of the major spearheads of the surrealist movement, a type of modernism, in which the fabric of realism and definitions are questions. One of Magritte’s more famous works, The Treachery of Images, Magritte shows a picture of what obviously is a pipe, yet, written in French beneath the image, states “This is not a pipe.” This was the dawn of a philosophy which would take the western art world by storm, called structuralism/post-structuralism. This is the philosophy where ideas/words and their meanings can be flexible depending on the viewer or the circumstance. This philosophy believes in the subconscious identification with images/colors that people have with art. In Magritte’s Treachery of the Images, his statement that “this is not a pipe” can be interpreted in different ways. One could say,

The more experiences that I acquire in the development of children, the better I understand the nature of the child. I reject Hobbes’ theory of the nasty brute, for I do not view children as being born inherently evil. My views of the nature of children also differ from that of Rousseau, for I do not view children as noble savages being born inherently good. I do advocate the theory of John Locke, the tabula