Andres Resendez’s work A Land So Strange interprets Cabeza de Vaca’s journey across America as “an extreme tale of survival” in which he was able to bridge two different worlds in order to survive. Resendez’s central argument is that Cabeza de Vaca transformed over his journey across America from a conquistador with conquering intentions to a medicine man that advocated for diplomacy and alliance with the Indians. Resendez’s interpretation of Cabeza de Vaca’s transformation and commitment to a more peaceful and kind conquest aligns with Cabeza de Vaca’s personal account at surface level, however; when Cabeza de Vaca’s intentions are evaluated from his personal account on what happened, it becomes evident that Resendez did not interpret Cabeza…
Malcolm Gladwell in chapter one of Outliers convincingly describes that some people are more advantageous than others due to when they are born. In this case, Gladwell talks specifically to rule creators and authorities of sports leagues and elementary schools, because they have the power to make adjustments to unfair advantages. By unfair advantages, hockey leagues in Canada fixed an age cut-off date for incoming players, and elementary schools positioning the oldest students within a class to higher academic levels. Overall that signifies the older, the more prestige a person gets. To prove his point, Gladwell implied in a simple and understandable statement that "players are judged on their own performance" (pg.17), but rebutes his claim…
IV By Chuck Klosterman There are so many inquisitive people living around the world. The majority of them usually don’t have an insight on what happens on Earth. In the book IV, Chuck Klosterman interviews many people and makes some commentaries about American culture. The book is divided into three sections; “Things that are true”, “Things that might be true”, and “Something that isn’t true.” Klosterman wants to separate these articles so he can give the audience an interesting perspective of how he sees them.…
A Dangerous Desire to Be Conventional “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. ”- Juan Ramón Jiménez. Ray Bradbury uses this quote in his novel Fahrenheit 451 to highlight a central theme that reoccurs throughout Fahrenheit; the importance of individuality and nonconformity.…
STEREOTYPES THAT ALL BLACK PEOPLE ARE LAZY “Not willing or wanting to work or use effort to do something.” (Cambridge). When we think of the word lazy, we associate it in a negative context by reason of how we relate it to the familiarity as to how it is used. Psychology Today talks about a laziness myth that claims: Human beings have a deep-seated need to grow and learn throughout their lives.…
Elements of deviant and abnormal behavior associated with white-collar crime Deviant behavior is defined as any human activity that violates social norms. Social norms are the basic framework that help to keep our society organized and functioning. People that don’t or can’t abide by those norms are present in every aspect of humanity. Normally people will identify these outsiders and keep their distance. Mostly these individuals end up on the fringes of our civilized world, though there are certainly exceptions to this rule.…
Throughout the history of the human race, societies have collectively established themselves as “one.” The human tendency to establish a binary in which all must fit perfectly inevitably leads to outsiders, or the Other. The ingrained urge to designate identities and particular behaviors into varying sects and categories still causes problems within any community. Today, this is most commonly seen in regards to gender identity, sexuality, religious background and practices, and ethnic backgrounds. Within the novel Grendel, human tribes are presented as in competition to outside tribes; a notion not unfamiliar in modern civilization.…
In Outliers: The Story of Success, introductory facts are presented in the epilogue, where Gladwell explains to the reader about his family’s heritage. He states how his grandmother, Daisy Nation, was able to provide for and raise her two daughters in Jamaica during the early 1900s. His own family legacy is credible because it shows that he knows how success works, and how it helped his family move through life rather easily. This was all because his grandmother “was the inheritor of a legacy of privilege” (pg. 280), which is one of the main points that Gladwell brings up in his argument. The fact that his relatives lived through this experience is also his relationship to the topic.…
Curiosity Killed The Cat! (Close Reading for Frankenstein) Mary Shelly’s gothic novel explicates how the thirst of excessive knowledge and curiosity combined can lead to the demise of the person, not only the person, but the whole society can be put in danger as well. The attainment of a limited amount of knowledge is not considered to be perilous; however if the limits are crossed anything can happen. According to Frankenstein, Victor’s curiosity of perceiving excessive knowledge results in the demise of his entire family, including him and his ostensible son, the monster.…
Awkward is an adjective with a long history. It comes from the word parts awk and ward. Awk is a prefix that comes from the Old Norse word afugr which means “turned the wrong way”. Then, the actual word Awk was utilized, coming from Middle English and it meant “backward”. The suffix of the word is ward, meaning indicating direction towards (ironically toward is in all the meanings I found and that contains the suffix).…
David Brooks, who is a successful journalist, columnist, and self - described “comic sociologist” at The New York Times, communicates the dilemma of diversification in his expository essay “People Like Us”. The writer thinks that people should encourage diversity to perceive and esteem each other 's different reflection. David Brooks demonstrates why all different kinds of humans are attracted to identical and similar races, ethnicities, religions, beliefs, political values, and classes in his essay based on typical examples surrounding us. Author’s convincible thoughts give interesting questions to readers include me, and it makes us reflecting and considering one more time with the necessity of diversity in not only America but also the global…
There is a thin line between normal and abnormal. Normality is completely relative to the society in which one exists. Each culture has its own definition of average and each person is expected to live up to that definition. When someone does not meet that expectation, they are often ostracized from the group and labeled an outcast, or even a monster. Although the “monster” itself faces many struggles throughout life, the family of the “monster” is often left conflicted between fitting in with society and supporting their loved one.…
Hortense Powdermaker’s book, Stranger and Friend, chronicles her experiences doing fieldwork throughout her career. In it, she discusses culture as shared meaning, where context and history give different components of a society social value. Through this process, essential qualities of a culture develop. The theory with which Powdermaker views culture, cultural essentialism, is one which uses these essential qualities as means of identification to form groups of people. This differs from Malinowski’s functionalist view, which claims that culture serves the needs of individuals rather than of larger communities.…
The Other, despite its strangeness, functions ironically in the two texts as a parallel to the normal, thus destabilising the normalised and in turn serving as an effective critique of society’s rigid over-simplified belief system – one that involves the flawed tendency to judgmentally delineate what is normal or not. In Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, the monster as the traditionally conceived Other (arising from its distorted looks) disturbingly mirrors his creator Victor who supposedly is more ‘normal’. Victor, though hailing from a respectable family and being largely assimilated within human society, essentially transmutes into the same ground as the Other through his alignment with the creature. To illustrate, both characters bear striking…
Why do people have different interpretations of the word “monster”? Some individuals, envision them as old, Greek mythological creatures. Others believe humanity is bombarded with monstrosity, as if it is a characteristic that we all carry, and very few utilize the meaning of “monster” as a societal or mental fear. I recognize the term as something more standard that many also conceptualize; as ginormous, snarling, blood-thirsty beasts. Beasts are the perfect perception of a monster.…