...How does the author’s literary technique distinguish between the character’s reality and the sleight of the hand trick of deception that the character uses to mask the heinousness of his past? O’Brien adopted the metaphor of John Wade as a “magician” and the ability he has to perform his exceptional magic trick in “vanishing” people from thin air. This illusion that the character honed creates a distortion between the reality John Wade is trying to bury and the ability for him to veil the truth about the My Lai massacre from the people around him. However, he was unable to dissolve the massacre that repeats vigorously in his head. John Wade also set up what is called “mirrors” in his head to create an alternative events in his life and to relief him of the truth that he wants to forget....
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...reading these pieces I concluded that the central theme is being awaken from a false reality but each piece differs in the action that follow the awakening. The Matrix is set in a futuristic setting, where the theory of being controlled by a massive computer is a real possibility. What I find most interesting is that Plato actually describes the concept of The Matrix, almost as if Plato’s dialogue was used an inspiration. In The Matrix and Plato’s dialogue, humans are not physically living the life they perceive as “real” but are stationary beings who are forced to live a false reality prescribe to them. This is where René Descartes’ excerpt differs from the previously mentioned. The person is aware of possibility that what he knows as true could be false, that how could we know if what we are living is done consciously or if our existence is but a dream. All of the excerpts also rely on the reasoning that the mind is the sole contributor of our existence and our physical senses only respond to what the mind knows. The differences in the readings is based on the actions or possible outcomes that occur once the awakening has taken place. In The Matrix, Neo decides to act and decides to embark on a journey to discover reality not being controlled by a computer. Plato’s dialogue is different because this is based on a hypothetically theory, so while there is no physically action the questions lies in how would people respond to the truth. Would man continue to live the false life given...
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...Through the exploration of a pair of texts composed in different contexts one can observe the significance of the ability of texts with varied form and context to still present and reflect similar values. A Room of One’s Own (hereafter AROO), a polemic, by Virginia Woolf and the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (hereafter WAVW) by Edward Albee both address gender inequality and truth and illusion even though their contexts and form starkly contrast. An analysis of similar themes will provide a greater understanding of meanings and perceptions of the texts. AROO, written in the post-war period of the late 1920s, was composed in a time of great social change due to the destruction and turmoil of the War. Modernist writing highlights the absence of, and search for, meaning and features experiments with new forms. Loss and absence lie at the heart of Woolf’s art, resulting from the experience of loss as an adolescent – her half sister, father, brother and mother. Her refusal to give one single view of anything, offering instead multiple, often conflicting views which the reader has to balance and bring together is another modernist trait. In contrast, WAVW was written in a far more conservative context, and although Albee does challenge societal roles, he does it in a more blatant way. Written during a time of Cold War tension, where fear and instability was disguised beneath the facade of the Great American Dream, Albee is still able to paint a dystopian image of the stereotyped...
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...presented throughout the movie, The Matrix. Morpheus, the leader of the resistance, explains to Neo (also known as “The One”) that the “reality” perceived by Neo is actually “a computer-generated dream world…a neural interactive simulation”, which is known as the matrix. Reality, the perception as we know it, in actual fact, is a simulated reality created by machines to subjugate the human race. Throughout the movie, those against the resistance are hooked up to a machine that brings their mind to the simulated reality. Their physical bodies are hooked up to machines in the actual reality whereas their mind is sent to this simulated reality, making it feel as real and tricking your mind to think that you are present in this...
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...Michael Hafner Dr. Samantha Langsdale PHIL 1800 December 2nd, 2015 The Delusion Dilemma Rene Descartes once proposed a tedious accusation about dreaming, and how our senses that we use to perceive what is considered reality should not be trusted fully. In the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes attempts to convey the fascinating illusion of always being in a dream without a certain ability to distinguish what is actually reality or what is a dream, or at bare minimum prove that there are no certain marks to prove otherwise. He states, “…as I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep” (First Meditation). In my attempts to contrast what Descartes argument was comprised of and what certain illusions made him feel this way about our perception of physical existence. I turned my attention to his famous dream argument originally brought forth in his Mediation on First Philosophy, and will be using different ideologies between a John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, two famous English philosophers who have attempted to refute Rene Descartes’s dream argument by providing useful and insightful situations to further explain against the idea, as well as provide my own insight in concluding that we are not dreaming right now. It should be noted that within the...
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...The The Beauty of Perspective Illusion and perspective in art represents the victory of art over reality. Many artists continue to follow the basis of these illusionistic principals that have been used for many years before, but have added their own individuality to their art which has challenged new heights in illusion and perspective. These artists want to trick the eye of the viewers to ultimately create a work of art greater than reality itself. Trompe l’oeil has been a style that has lived on for many years. For this reason, illusion and perspective in art surprises the viewer because artists use perspective to shock the viewers and change what and how they view a piece of art. It wasn’t until the Renaissance that perspective was discovered. This discovery created depth in art. Through the use of color and contrast, artists were able to create art with depth never seen before in art. During the 19th Century, Impressionists began to look deeper into color relationships. What they discovered, would be the basis for perspective and illusion in art. They discovered that the use of cool tones made objects appear farther away than objects in warm tones. Artist’s main purpose for this type of art is to depict reality, but to evoke surprise and pleasure. Artists have been implementing illusionistic components into their work since the early 15th century after the discovery of the trick of the eye. Through linear perspective and vanishing points as well as color and...
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...information as a result of these conditions." [1] As Wayne Booth once stated: "I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work, (which is to say, the implied authors norms) unreliable when he does not" [2] . We are consumers of narratives which has given us the ability to identify unreliable stories. However as "theoreticians, we are less well able to say what constitutes unreliability and how it is detected". [3] Shutter Island is a film adapted, from a novel, by Martin Scorsese; the film is within the film noir genre, with an unreliable narrator that, as result, plays with your mind and makes the film appear to be very ambiguous. Shutter Island is clearly shown through the perspective of a fallacious narrator. A narrator's job is to reveal what is real in the narrative and, comparable to tellers in reality, the narrator may have it incorrect or would rather disclose what they deem to be true. "On this model we perceive narrative unreliability when we perceive a disparity between the intentions of the implied author concerning what is true in the story and the intentions of the narrator concerning what she would have the reader believe." [4] Shutter Islands' narrative follows this idea as throughout the film, the central characters perspective gradually becomes more and more inconsistent. The narrator successfully...
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...appearance of the figure or marveling at their outstanding abilities but that people idolize the glamour of these super beings. Postrel explains, “Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a particular, emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration, and aspiration.” (Postrel 2006) She is saying that glamour is what keeps the audience interested and almost believing that it is true but with enough distance to be able not to drift to far from reality. The reason why society has continued to follow the superheroes is that of the glamour, all the success of the films and comic books comes...
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...young and dreamt of the day we entered the world of adolescence. So eager to experience the sweet taste of independence that is, till reality came knocking on the door. It is the breakthrough from childhood to adolescence that was captured as the theme in John Updike’s story A &P and James Joyce’s “Araby”. The use of imagery to describe the lifeless and ordinary setting made it clear to distinguish the characters desire to overcome the barriers of childhood. The story of “Araby” begins at a dead end street where the narrator lives with his aunt and uncle. He describes the short days of winter and mentions, “The space of sky above us was the color of ever-changing violet (107).” He is expressing the continuous change that comes along with getting older, just like the ever changing skies, this feeling of continuous change is something the narrator has no power over and is frustrating to him. To represent the initiation into adulthood and the loss of child like dreams the narrator describes the street where the boys play: “The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes…to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens… to the dark odorous (107). It seems as though where ever the boy goes darkness follows, representing a dreadful feeling of growing up. Passing through to adolescence comes with the crushing of dreams and illusions. In addition to the point on desire to enter adulthood, when in class the narrator says to him self: “I watched my masters face pass...
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...the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand -- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep -- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? The poem is 24 lines, divided into two stanzas. The poem questions the way one can distinguish between reality and fantasy, asking, "Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?" ( wiki) Although the two stanzas are not identical in length, their similar use of an iambic rhythm and of couplets and triplets in their end rhyme scheme creates a pattern that matches the parallel of their ideas. In particular, the refrain (repeated) lines "All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream" unite the passages in the poem's conclusion of futility and regret at the movement of time. Poe draws attention to "all that we see or seem" with alliteration, and we can view this phrase as the combination of two aspects of reality, where "all that we see" is the external and "all that we seem" is the internal element. By asserting that both sides are the also alliterative phrase "a dream within a dream," Poe suggests that neither is more real than a dream. "A Dream Within a Dream" deals most specifically with the troubling idea that reality is impermanent and nothing more than a dream, as the narrator first parts from his lover and then...
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...Problem of Perception First published Tue Mar 8, 2005; substantive revision Fri Feb 4, 2011 Sense-perception—the awareness or apprehension of things by sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste—has long been a preoccupation of philosophers. One pervasive and traditional problem, sometimes called “the problem of perception”, is created by the phenomena of perceptual illusion and hallucination: if these kinds of error are possible, how can perception be what it intuitively seems to be, a direct and immediate access to reality? The present entry is about how these possibilities of error challenge the intelligibility of the phenomenon of perception, and how the major theories of perception in the last century are best understood as responses to this challenge. • 1. The Problem of Perception o 1.1 Introduction o 1.2 The Argument from Illusion o 1.3 The Argument from Hallucination • 2. The Sources of the Problem o 2.1 The Ordinary Conception of Perceptual Experience 2.1.1 The Objects of Experience 2.1.2 Perceptual Presence 2.1.3 The Transparency of Experience 2.1.4 Vision and the Other Senses o 2.2 Illusion and Hallucination • 3. Theories of Perception o 3.1 The Sense-Datum Theory 3.1.1 Indirect Realism and Phenomenalism 3.1.2 Objections to the Sense-Datum Theory o 3.2 The Adverbial Theory 3.2.1 The Adverbial Theory and Qualia 3.2.2 Objections to the Adverbial Theory o 3.3 The Intentionalist Theory 3.3.1 The Sources of the Intentionalist Theory ...
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...The final illusion is the Checker Shadow Illusion. This illusion shows two squares that are the exact same color. You mind thinks that the squares are two different colors, but your brain thinks that because of their background. It mainly has to do with how our brain interprets the drawing. The image is described as two specific checker squares, labeled A and B, are drawn on a grid. The checker square that is labeled “B” is being cast over by a shadow from a large cylinder. We are expecting the cylinder to cast the shadow onto the checkerboard. Because we are used to making sense of shadows in real life, we become aware of the shadow, and we think that we know how to interpret it. However, the person who made this illusion, Edward H. Adelson,...
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...Greene creates imaginative impact in his works and interprets the tradition or culture of the society. Greene’s short story “The Destructors” characterizes the gang’s indifference to sentiments, culture, tradition, emotions and beauty (Kolin). Greene explains the society of deprived hope and innocence. Greene uses the destruction of culture and tradition which leads to the characters to fall under the world of shadow and the dark imagery depicts loss of innocence. Greene’s participation in World War 2 enabled him to use that experience in “The Destructors” and explain how World War 2 transformed the character’s life. His imagery of darkness creates an indifference in the society. The society takes place in a world of shadow after World War 2 where there is no strong held commitments which makes the characters under no control (Kolin). The short story “The Destructors” creates an aware of undisciplined society that leads to evil intentions, loss of hope, and betrayal. After the demolishment of the house in “The Destructors”, the gang grows darker and sets an unscrupulous example in the town. In the story, the adolescent’s innocence is replaced by violent thoughts, evil intentions, selfishness, cynicism, and recalcitrant...
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...There are many similarities to be found between the Matrix movie and the writings of Pluto. Both deal with the way in which we all see the reality in which we live. Is it real? Is it false? How do we know that our minds and our eyes are not deceiving us? These stories give us a glimpse of something that may be true, something that we may have not even realized. They bring to life the possibility that we may be living a false reality. In the synopsis for the Matrix, a man named Neo begins to feel as though something is wrong with his life. When he meets Morpheus and accepts the red pill that he is given, he begins to see that the world he knows is nothing but an illusion. A cleverly put together scenario in which the human race lies unconscious in giant machines meant to keep them alive while the cables connected to their brains play out a simulated false reality. Pluto’s Allegory of The Cave conveys a similar message. His scenario describes men who have spent their whole lives chained at the neck and legs inside of a cave, only able to look forward, never being able to turn their heads in any other direction. Men chained to a false reality would be the common theme between these two stories. The cables connected to the giant machines in the Matrix are the modern day neck and leg chains of Plato’s The Cave. The characters in each story are taught to only see their world from one view. Of course they did not question what they saw and how they lived because from the time that...
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...Plato: Illuminating the Human Condition In “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato starts his writing with, “and now, I said, let me show a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened…” (66). The definition of allegory is “the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence; also: an instance (as in a story or painting) of such expression” (Merriam-Webster). Plato’s works were written before the birth of Christ. Yet it is just as relevant today as it bears witness to the complexity of human life and sheds light on the human condition—certainly a timeless topic for exploration. Plato’s writing depicts how we, as human beings, view, understand, and experience life and the things around us in our own unique way, and how we all struggle to make the right choices for ourselves, as it’s often easier to take the path of least resistance. When we see the sun, do we all see the same sun or see the same color? When we dream, do we all experience the same dream and give it the same meaning? These thoughts and feelings require us to look at our existence in a metacognitive way. As the story begins, there are prisoners living in a cave, bound by chains, and surrounded by fire. They can only see what is right in front of them. There is an opening in the front of cave that allows the light in. The prisoners can choose to see the light outside and yearn to be out of the cave, although most of them believe it is easier...
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