The Power of the Pun

                There seem to be two types of people in the world: those who appreciate the art of the pun, and those who do not.  I am of the former group, and as such often attempt to use puns.  Unfortunately, these attempts are met with the very polite “shut up” or with less polite, but more creative, descriptions of how I shall come to bodily harm if I do not stop making puns.

                Despite the disdain for puns many people I know express, many of the stories we read in English Class are created by skillful authors who use puns very strategically.  At the start of the Shakespearean play Julius Caesar, which we read last year in 10 Honors English, a common man, a cobbler, uses a lengthy string of puns in an argument against a high-and-mighty Senator.  The Senator has a plethora of Ethos, which might make those witnessing the argument support him; thus, the “mender of bad soles” (J.C., Act I, Scene I) decides to undermine such respect and gain support for himself by showing off his wit with a series of clever puns that get his point across without seeming blatantly disrespectful to the Senator.  In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, mistress Hibbins refers to Dimmesdale as “The Prince of Air.” (Hawthorne p#)  Hawthorne chooses that exact wording to subtly remind readers of how Dimmesdale, despite his revered reputation, errs by committing adultery, and subsequently by hiding his sin.

                The question is, why do puns work?  Much of what we study in class is about meaning beneath the surface, but such meaning is discovered after in-depth discussion and deep thinking.  Authors, however, know that many members of the intended audience of a piece of literature will never do anything more than casually test the waters before moving on.  To communicate deep meaning, authors are thus forced to pander not to the audience’s conscious reasoning - which can yield a treasure of understanding only with focused effort on the audience’s part - but instead to the audience’s subconscious, which picks up hidden clues even without an audience member’s intent to do so.  When someone reads or hears a pun, that person might never actually say “Oh! The author is reminding me of ____!”  However, the subtlety of puns can work wonders on the psychological level, manipulating an audience member into forming the conclusions desired by the author.  Puns anchor the audience member naturally to the general area the author wants the audience member to end his or her voyage at, with a bit of leeway still remaining for the formation of unique hypotheses.

I have a sinking feeling that most people didn’t sea the common theme of my paragraph above, but I’m not shore.  However, I’m hoping you picked up on it subconsciously. J

Slightly Slipshod Synthesis, Somewhat Shortly Sorting Sources’ Symbolic Suggestions

Everyone has something unique to offer us.  What a person is on the surface should not prevent us from appreciating them for who and how they are.  Many of the pieces we have read, including The Scarlet Letter, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and Black Men and Public Spaces, suggest that every person should be accepted – by both himself or herself and by others – because each person has individual abilities and natural gifts to offer, and discrimination based upon what a person is can jeopardize the well-being of both the one oppressed and any who oppress.

To provide QUICK examples (because I really need to work on using brevity):

·         In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne repeatedly remarks on all the good Hester does to help others.  She has so little in terms of material wealth, and yet she gives any excess to the poor, who often refuse her charity or accept it with bad grace because Hester has been labeled a sinner.  However, once the townspeople learn to look past what Hester is – an adulterer, as her scarlet A originally stands for - and begin to look at Hester for who and how she is, they rebrand the Scarlet Letter and its wearer, saying that the A stands for Able.  The townspeople are then able to gladly accept the efforts that they had previously denied themselves the benefits of.

·         In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, “Victor” tells of how he is hated by others for his Native American heritage.  He is a brilliant kid, far ahead of the rest of his classmates, but instead of valuing Victor’s intelligence and appreciating his heritage, his teacher attempts to punish him for it, and orders that he shorten his hair to be like normal white people.  Despite this, Victor remains proud of his heritage, and by the time he graduates, he describes his hair as “longer than ever” (Alexie), representing how he decides to accept what he is as part of how and who he is: someone who rises up and does his best despite adversity.

·         In Black Men and Public Spaces, Brent Staples reveals the ambiguity of the labels “oppressor” and “oppressed” when he explains how the “victims” of crimes aren’t only those directly harmed by them, but those who are discriminated against as a result of such crimes’ habitual perpetration by people of certain groups.  Staples is the kind of person who would try to help someone in danger, but says that he only has to walk into a dangerous situation to risk getting killed in the name of “self-defense”.  People see what he is – a black male – and it often prevents them from seeing who he is: a kind, gentle person who would much sooner help than harm.

Darn it – so much for brevity.

I think I’ll stop writing now, before I overdo this any further.

Have a splendid day, and remember to appreciate people for how they choose to be.  We cannot change what we are – that is out of our control.  However, we all make decisions daily about how we want to be, and who we aspire to be.  I am a person who tends to write way too much.  But now, I choose to be a person that knows when to stop speaking. (shut up now, me!)  Who do you choose to be?

Seeing differently

We all see things differently – textures, shadows, shapes, color, movement, depth, light.  However, the discrepancies in the ways we literally see are infinitesimal compared to the plethoric deviations of opinion among any number of people: divergences of metaphoric sight.  No two people are able to perceive a situation identically; each person has a brain that functions uniquely, and so each person will inevitably think in a distinct way.

                In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story of The Scarlet Letter, the narrators remark on how “there was more than one account” (Hawthorne 252) of what transpired on the day Dimmesdale passed away.  Most of the witnesses apparently agreed that Dimmesdale had a scarlet letter on his breast to match Hester’s famous A.  However, they disagree over the origin for Dimmesdale’s mark, proposing such theories as

·         The minister put it there himself as a torturous form of penance

·         Roger Chillingworth, being a necromancer, used magic and drugs to cause the mark

·         The symbol appeared as the effect of Dimmesdale’s horrible guilt, the spiritual essence of Dimmesdale affecting his physical being so profoundly

The narrators declare that the readers “may choose among these theories.” (Hawthorne 253)  The narrators also want the readers to note that some people denied that there was ever a mark at all on Dimmesdale’s breast.  Why?  The narrators suggest that this variation of the story stems from  “that stubborn fidelity” (Hawthorne 254) that causes a person’s closest  friends to support him or her despite obvious proof against that person, especially when that person is a clergyman.  As Ben (I think) suggested in class, Dimmesdale’s fellow clergymen might have been trying desperately to preserve the honor and eminence that their profession usually afforded them, which would have been called into question when the seemingly most holy and clearly the most venerated among them was revealed to be a hypocritical sinner.  I think this might have been for selfish reasons, or it might have been for the greater good; Dimmesdale himself says that he hates being unable to confess his sins, but that he knows he can do far more good for the people of the settlement if they still believe in his purity.  I also believe that some of the clergy may truly not have seen a sign of sin on Dimmesdale, because they had so much faith, it altered their vision of reality.

                Ultimately, my point is this: the way we perceive a situation, idea, person, or other object can affect how what we perceive actually is.  This has to do with my very first post and theological stuff that hurts the brain, but we can change the world around us by thinking differently.  Many people disbelieve me when I talk about the effects of thinking positively - I get a lot of, “Oh, for God’s sake, Michael, shut up!”  However, many others understand the tangible effect that a different perspective can have in our lives.  Some tie it to science, (take two minutes to read this article, it’s cool)

http://witnessthis.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/can-thoughts-affect-water-molecules/

while others connect the concept of positive thought altering our lives to their religions.  Personally, I use both as evidence.  As far as science goes, there have been innumerable studies that validate the idea that thoughts can affect reality, though science is still working on explaining why this is the case.  As far as religion goes, I’ve witnessed enough miracles in my life to feel the power of faith and belief in God.  Whatever you believe, try living with a more positive outlook, just for one day or one week, and see how it affects you.  You don’t need to read any more of my writing; the proof is in the pudding.*

*That’s a cliché meaning that the results will speak for themselves, in case you were confused and just though I wanted food.

This week we read a short piece by Deborah Tannen called “There Is No Unmarked Woman”.  Tannen discusses how men and women are judged differently based on their appearance, making her case that while men find it easy to go under the radar, thus going unmarked, women have no such option.  Tannen strives to write scientifically and professionally, and to seem not to choose a “side” in the battle, but she shows how she seems destined to fail in even that attempt to be unmarked, revealing that her points about how men and women are marked ascend to levels far higher and more intricate than clothing and hairstyles.

Tannen uses an anecdote about how once when a talk-show host demanded to know why a male audience member thought that Tannen was “male-bashing”, even though the audience member admitted that Tannen’s descriptions of women and men were “exactly” (Tannen) accurate, the man answered, “Because she’s a woman, and she’s saying things about men.” (Tannen)  Tannen references facts presented by a male biologist that support her points, and remarks on how because he’s a male, she doubts that anyone questions his right to talk about men and women, even as he agrees with her neutrality and goes beyond it, saying how men should be marked, not women.  Tannen discusses how her scientific credibility is reduced by her womanhood, especially as it pertains to matters comparing men and women. 

The prejudices Tannen notices about how people think of men as having more rights to talk about men/women issues than women do contrast starkly with the prejudices exhibited by our class as we discussed Tannen’s piece.  When Nate (importantly, a male) proposed his idea that women are marked because of other women, not because of men – who he says don’t notice all of the things women worry about being marked for nearly as much as women themselves do – there was a general outcry from numerous females in the classroom, who proclaimed quite emphatically how wrong Nate was.  A while later, Prakhya (importantly, a female) said something that, while not matching Nate’s words verbatim, had a conclusion – men don’t notice all of the things women worry about being marked for nearly as much as women themselves do – that seemed identical to Nate’s conclusion.  This should, if gender bias were not at play, have resulted in a new outcry about how erroneous the conclusion was.  However, with the old conclusion now coming from a new source, a female, all the women in the classroom did not clamor in protest, but instead nodded in agreement.

It would seem that the women in our class, at least, believe that women have a much greater right to discuss the subject of gender differences than men do.  I wonder how many people reading this are women, how many are men, and what they think of my point of view.  Ask yourself, whoever you are, this question: “How did I (that is to say, the reader of this post) interpret these opinions?”  Now, more importantly, ask yourself, “How would I (again you, the reader) interpret this post if I was told that it was not written by Michael, but by a female in the class he asked to write it for him, in exchange for writing a post for her blog, to mess with people's biased opinions?”  Not that that’s what happened, of course …