Response to Telling is Listening

Ursula K. Le Guin draws several comparisons between humans conversing and other connections in our world in order to highlight the special relationship that is formed when two humans converse. I think this one line in particular explains her thoughts very clearly, "In human conversation, in live, actual communication between or among human beings, everything “transmitted” — everything said — is shaped as it is spoken by actual or anticipated response." It is interesting because there are many different actions one person can take in order to obtain that anticipated response. This made me think about those people who might ask about your day, simply in order to speak about themselves and how their day went. However, this does not make the relationship between the two people conversing any less connected, because the person who is sharing still speaks in order to obtain that anticipated response. Le Guin also writes about how humans change the words. The tiniest imperfection or shift in tone of voice when saying a word can change the entire connotation. I completely agree with almost all that Le Guin has said in the article. It is interesting that the way we transmit information must be tied to some deeper, more intimate part of ourselves. I think it says a lot about humans and shows that humans inherently must rely on others. 

Response to Cormac McCarthy's Punctuation

It seems odd for a writer to have such a strong distaste for proper punctuation, but McCarthy seems to think that anything other than a comma, a colon, or a period is nothing more than "weird little marks" on a page. Punctuation's purpose is to make writing clearer to the reader in order to convey a message seamlessly and with minimal confusion. I suppose McCarthy thinks that his protest to the traditional use of punctuation presents him as a more accomplished writer, one that has enough skill to not have to rely on little marks to get his message across. Although, I think it is a useless skill. All readers have learned the rules of punctuation, and it makes the piece easier to understand, so why not use those weird little marks? Simply because one can understand the work with minimal marks doesn't mean that one should. I've read books before that do not use regular punctuation, and sometimes I become more focused on the lack of punctuation than the actual story. Punctuation is a system that makes reading simpler so that we can understand the ideas and stories of many writers with different styles without having to focus too hard on little things like who is speaking and when to catch your breath when reading aloud.

Heart of Darkness - TGOST

The history house is a place that is supposed to be representative of Kerala in order to inform tourists and natives alike about the history and culture of the Indian state. However, the allusion to Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, shows that the history house truly functions in order to please the tourists. The natives of Kerala do not think very highly of these tourists as they often assume that they are unintelligent. The narrator even goes as far as to compare them to rats, "The rats racing across the ruined landscape with dollar signs in their eyes. The world crashing around them" (223). When the tourists visit the history house they learn about the best parts of the state. They neglect to see the problems in the country and by doing this they make it so that the natives cannot enjoy the best parts of their own country. When telling historical stories it was mentioned that the natives felt, "trapped in the bog of a story that was and wasn't theirs" (224). Not only does the history house give out a false sense of culture in Kerala to the tourists, but it also impacts the natives, because after telling a watered down version of a historical story for so long, the meaning of the story begins to change. The historical stories became partially owned by the tourists since details were changed to make it seem less foreign, and these changes left the natives dissatisfied. Despite the name, the history house seems to be not where Indian history is embraced, but rather where Indian history goes to die.