Best of Week: Imperfection is Key

When discussing "Cathedral" we touched on the subject of how the main character being in an uncomfortable or undesirable situation is what stories are built on. This confused me at first, because as a reader I know that I always like it when my character is satisfied and I get stressed out when things keep going wrong for them.

However, as I thought more and more into it, it is when the character hits an uncomfortable situation, I want to read further so I can see them get out of it. The books that left everything perfect for the protagonist may have been the most pleasant, but they also were the least interesting and had the least amount of depth to them.

I can use this to help me when I am writing my short story in the future because I have seen the circumstances that Carver placed his main character in in "Cathedral" and these are what made it a short story worth telling. Not only does keeping the reader on their toes make the story more interesting, but it also makes it much more satisfying when things actually work out, like in "Cathedral" when the main character finds something in common with the blind man after being so uncomfortable with his presence.

The most beneficial thing I gained from our english class this week was how to write my short story and how to spot a good short story when I am reading. If the character isn't uncomfortable at least once, then there is no story.

Connection: iPad Commercials and Postmodernism

Recently, Apple has released a string of different commercials for the iPad proving their slogan that "iPad isn't just one thing, it's thousands of things." These commercials show all of the different things that the iPad can do, ranging from showing constellations to organizing presentations.

While looking at these different advertisements, i was reminded of the chart we read about modernism and postmodernism for Heart of Darkness. I could not help but think that the iPad is the perfect example of postmodernism in our world. It perfectly exemplifies the multiplicity of postmodernism as well as the ambiguous nature of it.

The iPad commercials show multiplicity very clearly because the main point of them is that the iPad can perform thousands of different tasks, so it cannot be said that the iPad has one specific purpose, but rather all of its purposes overlap, and vary from person to person.

The iPad itself is a very ambigious piece of technology. It contains elements of a mobile phone, a computer, and an MP3 player all in one, so it is hard to define exactly what it is. The ambiguity of the device I'm sure had something to do with the fact that we are moving into a postmodern world where it is harder to define exactly what something is, because it will contain elements of many different things.

Reading about postmodernism has made it a lot easier for me to see examples of how we are living in a postmodern world. In the same way, seeing these examples make it a lot easier for me to understand exactly what postmodernism means. It is a difficult concept to grasp, and one that few people can truly grasp, but I guess that makes perfect sense because in a postmodern world, no single person can explain anything entirely.