In Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the ending is rather ambiguous. In class, we discussed a couple of different ideas, but eventually just agreed that it was intentionally left ambiguous; everyone could get something different from it. In this post, I’m going to share what I got from the ending of this book.
My own personal theory is that if the main character had joined his shadow in escaping the End of the World, he would have woken up in the real world and not been trapped in his own consciousness. The professor did not mention this possibility, because he only works in the realm of science. The thought that the main character could choose to leave the End of the World would not have occurred to him as a scientific possibility, because the human mind cannot be predicted scientifically. If the main character had made the decision to jump into the pool, he would have basically chosen to break free of the world his mind had created. However, I think we are supposed to realize that this actually isn’t possible, simply because the main character doesn’t have the willpower to leave the world that he created. As the shadow says, it is his own world, of course he thinks he cannot leave it.
Cybernetics and systems science as academic domains were founded in the 1940s and 1950s. Cybernetic systems are defined as systems that are complicated, adaptive, and self-regulating. Systems science is a broader domain that encompasses cybernetics and other systems. Systems science theory states that however complex the world may seem, we can organize it into systems. Therefore, we can find general rules that apply to all systems. Systems theory focuses on the structure of these systems, while cybernetics focuses more on how they work. These two domains are often studied together, as they both focus on information, feedback, and communication.
-Audrey
Source: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CYBSWHAT.html
When we discussed “The Battler” by Ernest Hemingway in class, we mentioned how it seemed to be a coming-of-age story. Many of us were reminded of stories such as Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye. This connection is pretty obvious –these stories all feature a young boy lost in a big world, who learns some sort of lesson about life or adulthood by the end of the story. However, we discovered in class that it’s a bit more difficult to classify “The Battler” as a true coming-of-age story. For one, it’s a short story, so it gives us less to work with and decipher than those classic novels do. However, the main issue is the ambiguity of the ending –we are not sure if Nick has learned anything at all from the encounter, especially not something important enough to be associated with his “coming of age”. We discussed this ambiguity in class, but we didn’t ask the question that interests me now: why? If Hemingway intended for this story to be a coming-of-age story, why make it so difficult to understand the message? The previously mentioned coming-of-age books, Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye, have clear messages that they establish through the “journey” of their main characters. It is fairly obvious in both (particularly Huck Finn) in which ways the main characters come of age and what they learn, and it’s completely clear that they do come of age in some way. “The Battler”, again, is a different story –nothing is clear. Perhaps Hemingway does this as a reflection of his realistic views on growing up. These coming-of-age stories, though often inspiring, can be seen as unrealistic in the “real world”, as many things in life do not contribute to some sort of life lesson and are just arbitrary and meaningless.
-Audrey Doidge
aad6
I chose to analyze “The Dead” by Rupert Brooke (although I’ll bring up “The Charge of the Light Brigade” if I run out of ideas before 10 minutes pass). At first glance, “The Dead” seems to fit the typical mold of a World War I poem, as it it appears to be a perversion of the classical poetry at the time. It is beautiful, lyrical, and mentions nature, yet its subject matter is death. While this is normal for a World War I poem, it does stand out in some ways from other WWI poetry. For one, many WWI poems address the reader as “you”, which Brooke does not do. This poem also seems to have more idealism than other WWI poetry. For example, CH Sorley also mentions victims of the war in his poem “When you see millions…”, but his poem is very dark and startling. This poem by Brooke only mentions the beautiful parts of life that these soldiers left behind, which idealizes them. (ugh sorry)
Global Literatures in English