Month: November 2017

Towards the end of this quarter, I would like to dedicate this blog to all the wonderful things I learnt, and how I gained different perspectives in my English class. Since the theme of the class was to define a hero, we went on to summarise all our viewpoints and define a hero as someone who works for the benefits of others irrespective of the hurdles and does not stray away from doing the right thing.

As the course advanced, I realised that a hero could be an ordinary person and need not be idolised or framed to be a specific set of people such as Batman, Superman or Spiderman. I analysed the hero’s journey cycle in my previous blogs where I stated that the journey cycle is a theory that cannot be implemented to every person and that this theory contradicts my belief and claim that everyone is a hero.

 

On delving deeper into the subject, we went on to analysing villains. Many people believed that heroes are the supreme power. I would like to argue that villains also hold tremendous amounts of power, as much as the hero does. I also believe that villains are extremely strong, intelligent, competent, and courageous as they have the guts to face the hero and I believe that a hero is what he is only because of the villain. The hero is able to fight the villain only because he is able to put himself in that position and think like a villain and destroy that thinking.

We discussed various aspects of heroes in The Hunger Games, and also made a lot of claims on who should be categorised as a hero. We also came across various viewpoints about veterans, firefighters, famous celebrities etc. as heroes. So as a conclusion to all these perspectives, I would like to say that I believe a hero is a someone who strives to do what he believes is right, and works hard for the betterment of the people around him, irrespective of the hardships he faces. A hero is determined, focused, and can differentiate between right and wrong and even the smallest spec in this world works towards its goal in life which makes it a hero. Life is like a huge stage and everyone is the hero in their own play. It is up to the audience how they perceive this play.

Pangolins are mammals that are found in various parts of Asia and Africa. These mammals have protective scales made of keratin that has made them one of the most trafficked mammals in the world. An estimated 116,990 – 233,980 pangolins are trafficked every year. United Nations and the IUCN red list, world’s most comprehensive list of endangered species, have added all eight species of pangolins in their ‘critically endangered’ list. National Geographic has released its biggest awareness campaign where they released a video titled, “world’s weirdest species that have been endangered.”

We as college students and responsible citizens of the world grabbed the opportunity to raise an awareness campaign all over our campus in a hope that some person would get to know, by word of mouth, about this trafficking and would stand up against this illegal abuse of the pangolin. As a part of our research, we realised that Pokemon, the famous cartoon TV series, was among the first TV shows to raise awareness about the pangolin. They named the pangolin inspired Pokemon as Sandshrew whose evolved form was called Sandlash. In the series, there was a show dedicated to this Pokemon where Team Rocket, the villains in the show, keep a huge Sandlash hostage in their den where they planned to “torture and use the Pokemon as their slave.” Towards the end, Sandlash fought Team Rocket and escaped their treachery that symbolized the pangolin’s victory over illegal trafficking.

Once we realised this, we decided to use our knowledge of technology and raise awareness to people in and around our area by creating a Snapchat story and by printing out the old 90s Pokemon and adding its snaps to Snapchat and putting them all over the campus. We will continue doing this all over the week and we aim to induce the picture of this cute little mammal into our fellow college mates and also sensitise this issue of its illegal trafficking. Surprisingly, we have been getting a lot of positive responses from people all over the campus and it is overwhelming to see that there are people who do really care about the environment and the creatures on this planet.

More on Pangolins and its trafficking:

http://www.latimes.com/world/global-development/la-fg-global-pangolins-vanishing-snap-story.html

https://www.nrdc.org/experts/elly-pepper/world-bans-international-commercial-trade-pangolins

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/04/opinion/sutter-change-the-list-pangolin-trafficking/

https://qz.com/170554/demand-for-traditional-chinese-medicine-is-killing-off-the-worlds-quirkiest-animal/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/15/pangolins-13-facts-about-the-worlds-most-hunted-animal/

The Internet has opened up a plethora of knowledge and information that we could gather. Because of the developing technology, we are able to view every single event sitting in any corner of the world. But as it is said, “with great knowledge comes great responsibility,” we seem to have forgotten our responsibilities towards the community and towards the people around us. In olden days, there used to be sections in the newspaper that were set aside just for the critics would put forth their views. With the advent of internet, all of us have turned into critics. Being a critic is also an art. One must realize that healthy criticism is always accepted and right. But racial criticism is something that is unacceptable as it not only changes a lot of people’s perspective in the wrong way but also opens up a huge discussion where people worldwide could discriminate and pass racial slurs.

The article ‘Racist Hunger Games Fans Are Very Disappointed’, speaks about how the fans disapprove of the characters who played Rue, Thresh, and Cinna only because of their skin colour. There was a similar article where racist fans lashed out at an artist who drew a picture of the harry potter cast with Hermoine as a black girl. These articles prove how narrowminded we tend to get. Instead of appreciating the actors’ hard work, we have now become critics who look at the most irrelevant issue and point it out on a public platform where more and more people could talk about flaws more than the positivity. As days progress, we as humans should develop some civic sense and not be so narrow-minded. Instead, we are just making the world a horrible place where a lady isn’t safe, where a person with black or brown colour skin will be treated as inferior, and where judicial laws do not even listen to such “inferiors.” How does this make the world a better place? Instead of being responsible enough, people choose to aggravate such topics by writing and sharing the racial slurs even more. And it is sad to say that not only have we failed as critics, but we have also dropped our standards to be called humans.

Articles:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/28/showbiz/movies/hunger-games-black-actors/index.html

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harry-potter-hermione-racists-artist_us_59c258fee4b0f22c4a8de570

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/06/06/jk-rowling-slams-bunch-racists-against-black-hermione/85499252/

Chapter ten of They Say/I Say, describes the ways of incorporating metacommentary into our writing styles. Most of us unknowingly use metacommentary on a regular basis. It is basically a sentence that explains and guides the readers through the author’s claim. When readers misinterpret the writer’s message, it becomes essential to use metacommentary to guide readers through the thinking process involved to understand the author’s claim. The book uses a lot of different styles and templates to explain this. “What I meant to say was _________,” “My point was not ____, but ______.” are some of the very common uses of metacommentary that can be used to enhance the clarity of our writing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From this chapter, I clearly understand the importance of incorporating metacommentary in our writing styles. No matter how clearly an author writes, every person has a different perspective and different experience to relate to one single claim. In such scenarios, it becomes very important for the author to mention what he/she wants the user to interpret. In my opinion, the most precise and thought-provoking writers are the ones that create a multi-dimensional opinion. These multi-dimensional perceptions create a lot of ambiguity and reduce the essence of the author’s message.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although this is a different point of view, in my opinion, metacommentary also helps enhance a claim of the author. It helps the reader stay focused on what the author wants to convey and allows the reader to think on the same terms as the author. I personally feel that this form of writing could also act as an emphasis on a topic and the main thesis. Though it is mainly used to prove the author’s point, it can help generate the main topic and tie up various viewpoints that culminate to the main focus of the topic. So as a conclusion, what I mean to point out is that, we as authors, must try to incorporate metacommentary templates in our writing and not stray away from guiding our readers and making a clear point.