All posts by sfy1

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Major and Minor Characters in Breakfast of Champions

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It’s really interesting what Vonnegut does with all of his characters in Breakfast of Champions. Everyone in his novel gets their own “time in the limelight,” and gets to share parts of their backstory and perspective. This goes back to the ideas that Vonnegut expressed in his interview: he wanted his novel to be like a mythological story, and he wanted to abolish the distinction between major and minor characters. We are able to connect a little bit more with all of his characters because of the tidbits of personality we learn about them and, as a result, everyone becomes a major character. Or perhaps everybody becomes a minor character? When I read the book, I couldn’t really empathize much with any of the characters, including Kilgore and Dwayne, who the story revolved around the most. Even the omniscient and omnipotent narrator of the story didn’t have as much control over the path the novel was going down as I expected him to have. In a humorous ending to the book, the narrator was going to prove himself as Kilgore Trout’s maker and reveal all to him but was suddenly attacked Kazak the dog, who he claimed was originally the “main character” of the story. Although he eventually showed Trout his powers, it seems unusual that even the writer could not have anticipated everything that happened in the story. Just like in Trout’s story, it appears as though most of the characters in the novel are just machines that lack free will, and are unable to do anything outside of their programming. In the end, Vonnegut is calling into question whether or not we truly have free will through the carefully defined yet somewhat equal-in-power roles he has assigned to all the character machines in his novel.

-Sofia Yi

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Cut-Ups and Their Role in Nova Express

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Some of my cut-ups include:

  • “The peering this way and to a time machine would object was forcibly maintained by <<The La Baba,>> a wormhole just before it the lawsuit.”
  • “On one occasion the refusal to malshape of the oil jars in the back reaction only takes attached to Salim’s wall.”
  • “An example is air in General Stern travel: physicists have to Salim in the stomach, table expand, then a big nose and theory, both of which are at Bagram.”

The cut-up technique also plays an important role in Nova Express. Not only is it responsible for making some humorous paragraphs about insect people and the Gods that live in the cool spots of Venus, but it reflects the overall tone of the novel as well. Throughout their varied and slightly nonsensical journeys, the Nova Police appear to be fighting against corruption in governments and in societies. As a result, many of the themes of the book go back to control, or the lack thereof. I remember one passage in particular, about how negative thoughts are replayed over and over again until they eat you from the inside and you’re nothing but a shell of hatred and resentment. How much control do we really have over our minds? Perhaps the cut-up technique is also used to emphasize this idea of our lack of control; by piecing together random parts of other texts, Burroughs is basically relinquishing some of his control over the meaning and message of the novel and leaving it up to chance. However, as humans, we are still hard-wired to try to convince ourselves that there is some sort of meaning even when there isn’t. Do we lack control over our roles in society and merely try to convince ourselves that we don’t? Am I, at this very moment, also trying to find a deeper meaning in a text where there is none? Either way, we are ultimately left with a strange, semi-coherent amalgam of words that has the potential of being infinitely profound… or not.

-Sofia Yi

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Computers in the 20th Century

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The first electronic digital computer was created in the 1930s by John Vincent Atanasoff. While it wasn’t programmable, the machine could solve linear equations and used a paper card writer/reader as its storage mechanism. This machine established three rules that became the basis for future computers: it used binary digits to represent data, performed calculations electronically, and contained a system in which the computing and memory were separated. Although the computer was never fully developed due to Atanasoff’s leave from Iowa State College for World War II assignments, the 1930s also saw the creation of the first binary digital computers and the first programmable calculator, the Z2.

The creator of this calculator was a man named Konrad Zuse, who went on to create his next technological wonder that was aptly named the Z3. An electromechanical computer that became operational in 1941, the Z3 was the world’s first programmable, fully automatic digital computer. Later, the Z4 became the world’s first commercial digital computer.

As computers became increasingly sophisticated and increasingly widespread, organizations began to use them to simplify tasks and work more efficiently. Telephone exchange networks were converted into electronic data processing systems, and the US Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer named the “Torpedo Data Computer,” which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. The world’s first electronic digital programmable computer, the Colossus, was also built for the purpose of World War II. The Colossus was designed by engineer Thomas Flowers for the purpose of cracking German codes.

In the 1950s, the first computer designed to aid US businesses was created. Eckert and Mauchly created the UNIVAC, or UNIVersal Automatic Computer. Instead of punched cards, it used magnetic tape storage to aid in data collection. This machine was used by J. Lyons & Company to calculate the company’s weekly payroll. The first home computer, the Altair 8800, is not marketed to the public until 1975. At the cost of $400, hobbyists could own their very own machine that did not include a keyboard, monitor, or its own programming language. However, two young men decided to try their hands at writing a coding language for the new computer. Their names were Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and they started the project by forming a partnership called Microsoft. Soon after, Apple Computer, founded by electronics hobbyists Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, releases the Apple II, a desktop personal computer for the mass market that amazingly featured a keyboard, video monitor, mouse, and random-access memory (RAM).

What started as an enormous machine that could only solve simple math problems soon blossomed into something truly life-changing. Computers became more and more complex over time, and it took less than a century for them to integrate into the public’s daily life. Computers are easy to use, and they make tasks easier. The Internet allows us to share information with each other at a staggering speed that was impossible just a few years ago. This technological innovation has opened up a vast world of knowledge and information for everyone in the modern world. Where will all of this advancement lead, you ask? Well, we haven’t come up with an algorithm for that just yet.

-Sofia

Reflection

“The Charge of the Light Brigade” and “The Dead”: The Price of Glory

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While both “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and “The Dead” deal with war and the death that results from it, the poems present the loss of lives in two very different lights. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” starts at the beginning of a battle, detailing the events that occur in a glorious tale that is ripe with heroic sacrifice. Even the rhythm of the poem seems to be influenced by the spirit of war, as the stressed syllables create a tempo that resembles a trot. This work seems to criticize war a little, but poem’s intended purpose appears to be to celebrate the soldiers of the light brigade and to honor them as heroes.

On the other hand, “The Dead” employs longer lines and does not describe the events of a battle. The loss of the soldiers’ lives is not as glorified as it is in “The Charge of the Light Brigade”; in fact, the poem humanizes the combatants. They are no longer just the six hundred—they are individual people, and the time they have spent on the earth has been cut tragically short. Their memories and experiences have vanished as well, and “The Dead” mourns this loss much more than “The Charge of the Light Brigade” did.

Both poems use enjambment, but they seem to use it for different purposes. Perhaps “The Charge of the Light Brigade” uses these line endings to demonstrate the moments of suspense that occurred while “all the world wonder’d” (Tennyson 33), and perhaps “The Dead” uses it to mirror the abrupt ends to the soldiers’ lives? Finally, while “The Charge of the Light Brigade” ends with a cry that honors the soldiers as heroes and praises their endless glory, “The Dead” ends with a frost that settles over the water and leaves an “unbroken glory” (Brooke 13). As frost and winter often represent an end to the life that bloomed in the spring, this final glory is different than the one in the other poem, bringing about a more silent, peaceful end.

Sofia Yi