...In this essay I want to examine how postmodernism is used throughout Don Delillo's White Noise and Caryl Churchill's Top Girls. Although each of the texts are very dissimilar they both concentrate on restrictions in society, yet open up a whole new perspective to what these oppressive values really do represent. Postmodern novels are known to be published after the Second World War. It was after the 19th century that modernism was introduced, where the constraints from society's values were rebelled against. However, in the last few decades, there is an evident change that had occurred. Modernism focuses upon values that are oppressing in society, such as class, politics, race and gender. Yet, postmodernism doesn't focus on these aspects in a way that is challenging them; it focuses more on a utopian idea of the world. It is where these constraints are not just acknowledged, but disregarded as they shouldn't seem to matter simply because boundaries in society shouldn't be an issue. Don Delillo's White Noise, was first published in 1984 and it looks into how the world is changing through the medium of popular culture, the media and most importantly, technology. The reader is exposed to this through the eyes of the protagonist, Jack Gladney who is a professor of Hitler studies in a university. A major theme that occurs throughout the novel is the subject of death. We see that Jack has a great fear of death. However, in one of Jacks lectures he unexpectedly confronts this fear by...
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...Let me start with the first lines that appeared in The New York Times five years ago: “David Foster Wallace, whose prodigiously observant, exuberantly plotted, grammatically and etymologically challenging, philosophically probing and culturally hyper-contemporary novels, stories and essays made him an heir to modern virtuosos like Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, an experimental contemporary of William T. Vollmann, Mark Leyner and Nicholson Baker and a clear influence on younger tour-de-force stylists like Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer, died on Friday at his home in Claremont, Calif. He was 46.” It’s not your conventional obituary. No, it has a literary style befitting the writer we lost on September 12, 2008. And five years after DFW’s death, we might want to pause and revisit his many stories and essays still available on the web. To mark this mournful occasion, we’ve updated and expanded our list, 30 Free Essays & Stories by David Foster Wallace on the Web, which features some timely and memorable pieces – “9/11: The View From the Midwest,” “Consider the Lobster,” and Federer as Religious Experience,” just to name just a few. Below we’ve also highlighted some of our favorite David Foster Wallace posts published over the years. Hope you enjoy visiting or revisiting this material as much as I have. David Foster Wallace’s 1994 Syllabus: How to Teach Serious Literature with Lightweight Books ‘This Is Water’: Complete Audio of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon Graduation...
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...Jack later goes on about how he was advised to gain more weight and even grow out a beard to better represent what he was teaching. This describes how Jack has to fit a certain look because he represents Hitler and Jack conforms to these expectations. Jacks desire to conform and fit this image that he has been labeled with is shown again in Chapter seventeen when he runs into Eric Massingale, a fellow College on the Hill professor, at the mall. Massingale is surprised at how different Jack looks out of his college attire. Some or Eric Massingales comments are as follows “I've never seen you off campus, Jack. You look different without your glasses and gown” “You look so harmless, Jack. A big, harmless, aging, indistinct sort of guy.”(Delillo, 106-107) Jacks encounter with Eric prompted him to go on a shopping spree to overcompensate for his harmless image. Jacks desire to fit into his created persona shows the readers that he is uncomfortable with his normal self and he tries to hide himself with the whole Hitler image that he created. Denise the the eleven year old daughter of Babette is someone who I think shows how someone does not fall into the typical gender roles of this country and society. Right from the beginning of the story Denise was and would continue to be the most vigilant of the way her mother Babette...
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...and our dependency on them, the steady flow of media affecting us daily, and the dangers technology poses for humankind. In White Noise, technology makes its presence known in the way we depend on and interact with machines. An example of this is Jack’s use of the ATM machine when his financial calculations are confirmed and a sense of peace and comfort seems to overcome his uncertainty (Sparknotes), “What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed” (DeLillo 46). An instance where our dependency on the use of cars for transportation is shown at the very beginning of the novel, “The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus…The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes…” (DeLillo 3). Another occurrence of people’s dependency on the use of machines is throughout the airborne toxic event when sophisticated equipment and measuring devices need to be used to figure out the contamination levels and to protect the rescue personnel. The SIMUVAC technician who taps into Jack’s records on his computer is yet another example. Evidently, technology becomes visible through the constant interaction of people and machines and our addictive dependency on them. Technology in White Noise is represented through “the constant stream of media...
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...Videotape Don DeLillo is the author of “Videotape” published in 1994. He believed that writers were supposed to write about the world around them. He has claimed that his fiction comes from living in a dangerous world and why is this a dangerous world? What is it that makes our world dangerous? Primarily I think it is that we have the equipment’s to destroy the world, and our world would never really be in peace before we demolish those equipment’s. This is where “Videotape” comes in play, all his fiction is inspired by this dangerous world, and it is no different with “Videotape”. Don DeLillo makes the reader question life with his stories. Even though his stories are fiction, they seem very real. Don DeLillo’s fiction “Videotape” is a story about a man who is clearly mesmerized by some footage on the news. The footage is being showed over and over again, it is about a young girl with a video camera and a stranger in the car behind her. She begins to film the stranger, the stranger sees the girl and waves briefly as the girl keep on filming. Then in a blink of an eye an unknown killer shoots the stranger, he is called “The Texas Highway killer”. The man who is watching the footage can’t seem to back away from the TV, he even tried to get his wife over to watch it with him, it’s like he is addicted to seeing something like that. So the question is why do we keep on watching something terrifying and terrible? So why do we keep on watching all these terrible things? In “Videotape”...
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...Project Report on Advertising Agency Table of Content ADVERTISING........................................................................................................................................3 INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT..................................................................................................................................4 NATURE OF THE INDUSTRY..........................................................................................................................5 MEDIA.....................................................................................................................................................7 IN-FILM ADVERTISING.................................................................................................................................9 WORK ENVIRONMENT .............................................................................................................................10 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.....................................................................................................................11 EMPLOYMENT AVENUES.............................................................................................................................12 PUBLIC SERVICE ADVERTISING....................................................................................................................12 REGULATION.........................................................................................................
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...EVIDENCE OUTLINE Prof. Mark Bonner Fall 2012 |1 • INTRODUCTION | I. Trial Context A. types of evidence at trial 1. witnesses 2. real evidence – something tangible related to the case 3. demonstrative evidence – not part of the story, but lawyer wishes to show the jury something to demonstrate something about the case (e.g., experiment; picture of intersection) B. competing stories at trial – two ways stories can compete 1. factual differences 2. differences in inferences drawn from the same facts II. Policy Overview [values that the evidence rules protect] A. accuracy 1. rationality – does evidence have a rational relationship to the case? 2. reliability – is the evidence credible? B. efficiency – see FRE 403 C. fairness – rules should be party-neutral 1. but note: some rules exclude evidence to one party’s advantage (e.g., evidence that Δ fixed the steps after the accident excluded, b/c we want to encourage Δs to make steps safer) (e.g., Confrontation Clause, guarantees rt of accused in a criminal trial to confront witnesses brought against him) D. danger of misuse of information 1. one solution: limiting instructions 2. but sometimes we’re so skeptical of jury’s willingness/ability...
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