Eating Shallow Mice: A Story for Children (Post 13)

When I think about comparing Maus to the other books we've read this semester, my first thoughts go to the "Storytelling" chapters of Eating Animals. Aside from similarities in content (such as Safran Foer telling stories about his grandmother much like Art is telling stories about his father), the structure of telling stories to make (or just support) an argument is similar for both. In telling those stories, it evokes a pathetic (in the pathos sense) emotional feeling inside of us--one that allows us to relate to the stories being told and see the author as a fellow human rather than some distant source of information. I've come to realize that storytelling is a very important facet of nonfiction writing, because I saw that Carr's lack of storytelling in The Shallows made it less likable for me. Carr did take some time to discuss himself and how he fits into the context of technology, though. And it was much like the way Safran Foer put himself in the context of eating animals and the related practices he carries out in his own life. And, quite clearly, Art put himself into Maus as an essential part of the whole story. These stories and connections to the author make the reading and understanding and relating and analyzing much more enjoyable.

Blog Post #12

In the first volume of Maus Art Spiegelman definitely uses pathos in his earlier comic “Prisoner on Hell Planet”. He tells the story of what happened when his mother died. Here he obviously is appealing to our emotions. He is giving us more information so that we can get a better understanding of him and his father and even maybe his mother. We start to sympathize with him and understand why he has the relationship with his father that he has.

            Another part where Spiegelman appeals to our emotions in the first volume is when he draws the german soldiers banging children against the wall to make them be quiet and hurt them (page 110 in the complete Maus). He didn’t have to draw that picture just like he didn’t draw the picture of his aunt giving Richeu the poison. He consistently draws picture to give us a visual example of what was happening yet he didn’t show exactly what happened to his brother, only drew his fathers words. Especially when people are suffering does he make almost human like expressions on the mouses’ faces, which make us feel even more depressed about the stories and what happened in the war and concentration camps. These pictures fit in with the story because it makes it more real. Even though it is mice we are seeing, they still have human bodies and have human actions.

Blog post 11

Throughout the novel The Shallow,s I have agreed and disagreed with multiple statements Carr has made. In the beginning of his novel he makes multiple arguments about how our generation is so focused on receiving information as quickly as possible. He explains we often have a hard time diving deeply into a complex novel and truly understanding the information. This almost creates a diverted type of attention, which causes issues when trying to truly focusing on one task. These types of statements made by Carr I completely agree with. I think this really adds to his overall argument. However, I think a lot of his arguments are very repetitive and not modern. I believe he should have added more about technology's influence on aspects of social interaction. I think this would have made his arguments more interesting and reliable. 

Blog Post 12

One moment that I feel exemplified extraordinary pathos was when Vladek’s friends were made an example of by the Germans and hanged in the street for a week (85). This page contained a picture of the full body hangings, a couple of pictures with just their feet hanging, and you could see the sadness on Vladek’s face when he explained the situation. I found the pictures to be the most powerful in portraying pathos because you can only imagine how horrible it would have been to see real bodies, not just a comic of mice.

The reason for their hanging was because they were caught dealing goods without coupons. I found this incredibly heartbreaking because at this time all the Jews were just doing what they had to in order to survive and helping each other out in any way they could. Everyone was doing it. And to find out that goodhearted people, who were only trying to help out there fellow Jews by giving them goods without coupons, had to suffer the consequences makes me sad and angry that that was something that even happened, and to a lot of people. This shows the extent at which all Jews were treated and I think it also highlights the fact that Vladek was very lucky to have never gotten caught with his ‘business’ and contributes to the fact that he is a survivor.   

Blog Post 11

As many others have said, I was not a big fan of The Shallows, in fact, I found it very difficult to concentrate while reading because I was so uninterested. I thought Carr’s arguments were constantly overdrawn and that overall his argument was weak. I didn’t think that it was necessary for him to go into such depth with many of the topics that he brought up. Instead he should have focused on making more valid points to support his argument that the internet is changing our brains for the worse. I agree that the internet has harmed our attention span, making it shorter and causing us to become distracted more easily because as he talked about, our brains have gotten use to the short snippets of information, making it harder for us to focus for a long period of time. However, I do not necessarily agree that the internet is all bad. We talked about in class a lot of the pros that the internet encompasses, such as being able to work faster and having the accessibility to become more knowledgeable, as well as being able to communicate with others through social media. I think Carr overlooked some of these aspects, or if he didn’t, then chose not to talk about them, which I think hindered his argument. I also don’t agree that books are becoming obsolete. Although they are being used less, I think that they are and will continue to be used, even though technology is advancing, making it easier not to need them. In my opinion books will always hold value and I don’t believe that they are going anywhere.  

Blog 11

Mr Carr,

I would like to say, that your argument was an interesting and involving argument. When you depicted our minds as unable to focus, because I do see a little bit of loss of attention span every day. I welcome the idea that technology is changing our brains, and developing habits that belong with the technology. Just has reading changed how we think, the internet changes how we think.

But I have to disagree with the negative aspects of our learning. I don't think that google will eliminate memorization and learning all together, I find these changes to relate to just how we are coping with a new technology. The internet is still a young medium that is developing. I find that we will be able to have deep reading and deep thinking with technology the more we develop and change, and I find it too early to draw up our reaction to this brand new medium as permanent or bad.

I find this is a change that will impact us just as reading did, it will change our minds and the way we think. But does it have to be a bad thing? We live in a world of demand and information and maybe we'll find a way to learn more and develop more with it.

Just a few things to consider,

Alec M. Giannakopoulos

Blog Post #11

As others on this blog have stated, I have to agree and say that I did not at all care for The Shallows. The first few chapters were honestly just annoying to me because I felt like Nicholas Carr kept re-stating a bunch of stuff he had already been talking about. The first chapter, however, was not too bad….it was sort of interesting how much I agreed with him about how the internet does in fact change the way we learn and how the internet lets us learn about many different subjects within a small timeframe because we always just read short articles. I personally feel like Nicholas Carr did not have a valid argument. In a way he wanted us to agree with him, but he was really just informing us about how technology has changed our every day lives so much. I really hated the entire book until the last chapter when Carr starts talking about how technology is helping us “lose part of ourselves”. I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. I definitely think that my generation is on their cell phones way more than is needed, but I still feel like technology is the only thing that helps us change and develop.