Interpretation By Susan Sontag

In the early stages of the year 1873, social reformer, women's rights advocate, proponent of feminism, Susan B. Anthony, shed’s light on women being able to have a lawful right to vote, with an influential speech, that leads to equality for women and men, this protest coordinates women and voting, but also opens opportunity for women in everything that they do. Susan B. Anthony supports her claims in a forceful manner, by explaining the amount of suffrage taking place in women's lives, as a result of the lack of rights they have, she gives a valid example by explaining her arrest, for “the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote”, she states that she did not commit a crime, she just exercised her rights as a citizen guaranteed by the National Constitution. Anthony’s purpose is to exert the rights for women that are in the Constitution, that are being overlooked by the United States Government. She establishes a compelling tone for whom it applies to.

Throughout "Our Secret" Griffin explores the different characters' fears and secrets and she gives specific insights into these "secrets". Through examining others Griffin comes to terms with her own feelings, secrets, and fears. She relates to Himmler, Leo, Helene, and everyone else even though she is different than all of them. One fact that can be made about all of these characters is that they all represent humans and human emotion

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s unconventional childhood, growing up without a father because her mom kicked him out and having to learn independence and responsibility by the age of twelve, influenced her poetry and shaped her as an motivated and self-sufficient individual. By the time “Vincent”, as she liked to be called, was nineteen years old, she already had already made a name for herself as a formidable poet. A couple discovered her and sponsored her education at Vassar College where Vincent experimented with her sexuality. She openly expressed her bisexuality, and continued to have both male and female sexual partners. When she married Eugen Boissevain, the couple agreed

It tends to be the trend for women who have had traumatic childhoods to be attracted to men who epitomize their emptiness felt as children. Women who have had unaffectionate or absent fathers, adulterous husbands or boyfriends, or relatives who molested them seem to become involved in relationships with men who, instead of being the opposite of the “monsters” in their lives, are the exact replicas of these ugly men. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a perfect example of this unfortunate trend. In this poem, she speaks directly to her dead father and her husband who has been cheating on her, as the poem so indicates.

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

In Susan Wolf’s, “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life” Susan writes what makes a meaningful life, her belief is as followed “Active engagement in objective worthwhile activities.” Wolf believe this is the solution to a happy life instead of a depressing and sad one. Wolf said that both Active engagement and objective worthwhile activities need to be present to have a meaningful life. Thought the page, we will see how Wolf arguments requires both parts to accomplish meaningful life then we will make an objection to the arguments which I will then respond to argue against showing why the objection is false.

Many live under the assumption that those who come to the United States want to become Americanized and assimilate to the melting pot our culture has formed into. This is the populations ethnocentric belief, which is the belief that the ways of one’s culture are superior to the ways of a different culture, that wants others to melt into the western ways. In Ann Faidman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Faidman fails to completely remain objective when demonstrating how cross-cultural misunderstandings create issues in the healthcare field, specifically between the Hmong and western cultures that created dire consequences between the Lee’s and their American doctors. Faidman uses her connections with the Hmong and the doctors who cared for them in order to disclose the different views, beliefs and practices the Hmong and Western cultures practiced. With her attempt to be culturally relative to the situation, Faidman discusses the series of events and reasons as to why the Lee’s faced the fate that they did and how it parallels to the ethnocentrism in the health care system.

Susan R. Wolf (born 1952) is a moral philosopher who works extensively on the meaning of human life and is the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wolf addresses the questions of the meaning of life in hope to distinguish the characteristics and reasoning that gives meaning to life. According to Susan Wolf view about the meaning in life, “I would say that meaningful life are lives of active engagement in projects of worth… two key phrases, ‘active engagement’ and ‘projects of worth’” (Wolf, 205). However, I believe that her proposal leaves out our basic motives and reasoning that’s

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet, “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed,” serves as an excellent example of a multi-faceted piece. From one angle, it is simply a Petrarchan sonnet, written with a slight variation on rhyme scheme – but that variation, taken deeper, reveals new layers of meaning. Added to Millay’s choice of meter and end-stop, along with a background of Millay’s person, this sonnet seems not so “simple” after all.

In John Berger’s essay “Ways of Seeing,” he shares his view on how he feels art is seen. Mr. Berger explores how the views of people are original and how art is seen very differently. By comparing certain photographs, he goes on to let his Audience, which is represented as the academic, witness for themselves how art may come across as something specific and it can mean something completely different depending on who is studying the art. The author goes into details of why images were first used, how we used to analyze art vs how we do today, and the rarity of arts. He is able to effectively pass on his message by using the strategies of Rhetoric, which include Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.

Just like everything else in life, art has its critics. Art criticism is the expression used to describe the act of making selective judgments, both positive and negative, about an art piece. Just as art is so diversely expressed and interpreted, those who critique it also have various methods and use various standards when criticizing an art piece. There are many theories critics use to evaluate art but there are three basic theories most commonly put to use by professionals. The three basic theories are: formal theories, contextual theories, and expressive theories. Formal theories focus on the formalities of art. Critics using formal theories pay close attention to the making of a piece, how each section of the art piece works to form a visual experience that may or may not attract the attention of those who come across it. Formalists’ attention is centered on the formal organization rather than the themes, which they deem irrelevant. Contextualists, on the other hand, value the theme and its relevance to the times in which the artwork was created. The contextual theories deal with the context in which an art piece is used; what it symbolizes concerning the culture and values of the environment. Lastly, there are the expressive theories. Expressionists are more concerned with the artist and the personal expression put into the work. Also, because art is a method of communication, expressive theories

question John Berger, critic of art and author of the Ways of Seeing, raised in his essay, and it is

Deconstruction or poststructuralist is a type of literary criticism that took its roots in the 1960’s. Jacques Derrida gave birth to the theory when he set out to demonstrate that all language is associated with mental images that we produce due to previous experiences. This system of literary scrutiny interprets meaning as effects from variances between words rather than their indication to the things they represent. This philosophical theory strives to reveal subconscious inconsistencies in a composition by examining deeply beneath its apparent meaning. Derrida’s theory teaches that texts are unstable and queries about the beliefs of words to embody reality.

According to Victor Erlich a formalist interpretive critical lens seeks to, in its simplest form, extract the meaning of the language used and omit any reference to the author or historical setting. Formalist literary criticism was formed to focus on symbolism, tone, structure, . I have chosen to use a formalist approach of interpretive criticism analyzing the following: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Saunders’ “Jon”, and Walt Whitman’s poem “A NOISELESS patient spider” to