George Orwell, "Politics And The English Language"

1. What is Orwell's argument?

The english language is slowly decaying due to the bad writing habits and imitation of these. We need to focus more on the meaning of what we want to write so the words we choose express it clearly.We cannot change the style of some of the writings, but we can change the bad habits with which we write.

2. Identify two cases of irony:

In operators or verbal false limbs there is irony shown at the end of the argument when he end it with " so on and so forth", instead of writing simple conjunctions or prepositions he writes end it with a phrase that must be avoided.

When he uses similes or metaphors without conveying the right image in the reader after saying a writer must avoid it. "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink"(Orwell). The cuttle fish does not create the correct image the writer would want to express.

3. Define:

Dying metaphor: Worn out metaphors which have lost their meaning and they save people the trouble from being original. 

Pretentious diction: Words, usually foreign ones, that dress up simple statements, they use them instead of using a correct english word that can best describe what the writer wants to express. 

Meaningless words: Words that lack their true meaning because they are interpreted by everyone differently and no one really knows the truth of it.

Ten steps:

-Ask yourself the following questions when writing: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image it idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

-Try to reflect in your writing what you want to express in the simplest way possible.

-Be original, don't use cliches. 

-Never use the passive if you can use active voice.

-Never use pretentious words if you can think of an English word that is simpler and means the same.

-Never use something that has already been seen in print before.

-Avoid wordiness or words that don't contribute with what you want to express.

-It is not a matter of length but of quality.

-Don't try to sound smart by adding words or phrases just write what you want to express.

-"Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous"(Orwell).

History Through Whitman

Today in class I made a historical mistake. I thought that in the 1900 centuary the oriental mind had not yet influenced the american mentality. I was confused because I was taught in hisghschool that the modern age started in the 20th century but I omitted that there had to be other progess before to create the change. It was in that time, specially in the US where a new mentality rose, and also it was a modern nation were, as we read in class, there was a mixture of many nationalities.

 What I do have clear in my head is that in that time there was still slavery and it is clearly depicted in poem 13 when Whitman writes:
"The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses—the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain"(217). The tied over chain makes it obvious for us to understand the historical period of slavery in which the poem was written. It also creat mamicies because when he wrties "the block swags underneath on its tied over chain-" the dash creates the feeling of the chain and how the words are all imprisoned in them.
His poems give us an insight of the time he was going through, the historical time was an inspiration to Whitman´s writing.

Innovation

In Whitman´s 1-10 poems I noticed that his style could have been an inovation to poetry. He created a new style which was not the typical Iambic Pentameter form, rather it included a prose like form. He also included some topics that might not been as common in that time. In poem 3 when he writes:
"Out of the dimness opposite equals advance—always substance and increase, always sex;
Always a knit of identity—always distinction—always a breed of life"(38-39).
Not many poets refer to sec as he did, barely they referred to it. His topics are quite unusual and reflect the period of change that lead to modern times. I really can not imagine a poet talking about sex in that time, although the mid 1800 centuries was a period of progress for the US, it is not as if we see that time as opened minded to sex as we are now.

His style is innovative and opens ways to a different way of poetry.

The Recipe

In the last two chapter of a simple soul I realized the importance of each word in Flaubert's descriptions. At first I thought of them as wordy, but how con fiction be wordy? It can't be because every author has his own style to interpret his writing. In the case of Flaubert it is to make every word useful for his characterization, narration and description.

When he writes: "when she exhaled her last breath, she thought she saw in

the half-opened heavens a gigantic parrot hovering above her head." Every word creates the coherence of the sentence. If we were to take out the word gigantic, the readers perception of the scene would not be the same. Instead of imagining Loulou as the holy ghost showing the importance Felicite had for him, we would just see another bird that came near her shoulder after her death.

 It is like a cookie recipe. If you add all the ingredients the recipe will come out just fine, and it will be much enjoyable because it is the product of the exact recipe. But if you miss one ingredient the cookies will come out but not as delicious. Just as words, if you take one of Flaubert's words his sentences would not be as descriptive enough to depict the meaning of the story and of its characters.

Through Action

Flaubert's style in chapter I-III is based on a description through the plot of the story. He introduces his description through various ways, most of them are in movement, he writes: "then, when dinner was over, the dishes
cleared away and the door securely locked, she would bury the log
under the ashes and fall asleep in front of the hearth with a rosary
in her hand"(a simple soul).

At the beginning of the story we meet with more pauses, that lead us to a sudden description, not much hidden through the action set on the story, for example when he writes: "then she left her house in Saint-Melaine,

and moved into a less pretentious one which had belonged to her
ancestors and stood back of the market-place. This house, with its
slate-covered roof, was built between a passage-way and a narrow
street that led to the river" (A Simple Soul). Here we can see the pause Flaubert used to start describing the house, the period. Before he was talking about the action but in order to create the approach to reality he uses the pause.

But he focuses more on describing through the action, just as in Sauls Bellow's Seize The Day. When writes: "Every Monday morning, the dealer in second-hand goods, who lived under

the alley-way, spread out his wares on the sidewalk. Then the city
would be filled with a buzzing of voices in which the neighing of
horses, the bleating of lambs, the grunting of pigs, could be
distinguished, mingled with the sharp sound of wheels on the cobble-
stones"(A Simple Soul). The srtucture he gives here is quite interesting, because once he uses a lot of words it creates the feeling of a crowded market, looking at it in a literal level.

The way Flaubert describes here is more through the action, this makes the reader realate more to reality because that is the way in which we feel and see things, not through sudden stops, but through actions that lead us to the description.

Watch this video:

The balloons can only be described through the movement or action they are given, just as Flaubert does, the action makes the description more appealing and possible.

Confessions Of A Sentence

I am not much of a writer, specially in english. Most of my vocabulary is in spanish, and I am capable of making "words in the sentence are all vibrating and destabilizing themselves: no longer solid and immutable, they start to flutter this way and that in playful receptivity"(The Sentence Is A Lonely Place). At least that is what my old spanish teacher told me. But when it comes to English, "Words seemed to be intruders, blown into the rooms from otherwhere through the speakers of the television set or the radio"(The Sentence Is A Lonely Place). Perhaps it is because it is not my native language, or maybe I just don't feel comfortable writing in English because it limits my thoughts. I don't have enough vocabulary to fulfill all the expectations that my mind has for that piece of paper that will soon be read by someone. When Lutz wrote: "when we had to write, I could never call up any of the brassy and racketing words I had read" (The Sentence Is A Lonely Place)", I immediately had a flashback to the past weeks when I was writing my essay. I had some words in mind from previous books I read but they just disappeared once I started writing. Isn't it unfair? I just wish sometimes I was an English Dictionary I would avoid all this trouble.

But life is not as easy we have to learn to become good writers, and that is the purpose for this essay we are reading. Maybe it is not about knowing all the words but knowing how to work with them how to "make sure that the stressed syllables in a sentence outnumber the unstressed syllables. The fewer unstressed syllables there are, the more sonic impact the sentence will have"(The Sentence Is A Lonely Place).

Inconclusive

It came to an end, but can we really define it as an end? It was an inconclusive ending, The Tristero mystery ends up with no solution, and the novel ends before the reader could see what happens with the bidder who can help Oedipa unravel the mystery. Pychon does not give us time to wrap it all in. What we know is that Oedipa, trying to solve a mystery losses everything she once loved. She lost her husband to drugs, Dr. Hilarious to craziness, and Driblette committed suicide, and Metzeger ran away with a 15 year old, she says: "they are stripping away one by one, my men"(126). Her life has no meaning now and meaning the mystery does not have it either. She turned her life to "WASTE" trying to find something that may have just been a joke by Inveraty.

Most of the characters end up lost just as her quest. An example of her loss is how Mucho has been influenced by the LSD making him be lost in his own world, he said: "my dreams have changed (118)." and Oedipa is not a part of them anymore. The distortion of the world is the distortion of Oedipa to him.

I think that comes to the end of it, just as she lost her time and lost everything, in a way we lost it to. We tried to find the satirical meaning of the book to what purpose? There will still be things that we don't get and that we will never get.