Breakthrough Writer

Lesson Plan #4 for The Chocolate War: Determinism and the Death of Free Will

 

Part One. Essay Variation Based on Today’s Theme:

Analyze the lack of free will in Jerry, Archie, Brother Leon, Obie, and Goober as it evident in the novel.

Suggested Structure: In your first page, explain the difference between free will and determinism using appropriate example. Then in your thesis argue that free will is lacking in the novel’s characters who are beholden to psychological (irrational passions) and external determinism. The deterministic forces from which they have no free will are the lust for power, pride, corruption, revenge, the impulse to disdain the powerless, the pressure to conform, and the pressure to be obedient.

 

Part Two. Explaining Psychological Determinism

 

1.  psychological determinism: your environment and social conditioning leave an indelible print on your personality that no degree of “free-will” can change or erase. You are a product of forces beyond your control. Also referred to as “naturalism.” The characters in the novel are slaves to compulsions that they don’t see or understand.

2.  disaffected: the condition of being emotionally withdrawn, reserved in a condition of learned helplessness and cynicism, emotionally unreachable by the wall of defenses that were created long, long ago. We see learned helplessness in the depressed Jerry, Goober, and Archie. All 3 feel disconnected from others and in the novel all 3 betray themselves in one way or other.

3.  Innocent child’s dream of the omniscient parent: Jerry begins to see that his father has settled for mediocrity, that he never strove to better himself and deep down he is disappointed in his father and even has contempt for him. Without a father to look up to, Jerry feels aimless.

4.  Sadistic: taking pleasure in meanness, which is to say exacting cruelty upon others, especially the helpless. Brother Leon and Archie are examples of characters who have lost the ability to be happy except in the sick way of exacting cruelty against others.

5.  Post-traumatic stress disorder: depression, aggression, violence, and paranoia that results from repeated violent abuse. Sadly, we see that Goober suffers from it after doing one of the Assignments that sent Brother Eugene to the hospital.

6.  Rite of passage; a significant event that marks the passing from innocence to initiation; dubious outsider to loyal tribal member; childhood to adulthood; placid passivity to rigorous curiosity In the novel, conformity is the rite of passage, either selling the chocolates or doing an Assignment. These displays of loyalty and obedience come with a price: Compromising one’s individual conscience.

 

Part Three. Psychological Determinism means certain experiences leave a permanent stamp on our identity. What forces in the environment can forever cripple us emotionally?

 

1.  Abuse, the kind that Jerry and Goober suffer, results in post traumatic stress syndrome.

2.  Rejection from a group results in a sadness and loneliness that results in withdrawal, depression, and seeking out a unconditional love from another source. Consider the lives of two baseball stars Bill Buckner and Chuck Knoblauch who now just spend time with their families. They have disappeared from the game of baseball.

3.  Not getting unconditional love from your parents leaves a permanent hunger for love. Homeless teenagers spend their whole lives looking for unconditional love they didn’t find at home. Often I see them with dogs on the streets. There is a movie about this theme called Citizen Kane.

4.  A teacher who humiliates you and “has it out for you” can have a permanent effect, making you distrust education, making you hostile toward school, and distrustful of authority in general.

5.  Romantic betrayal can make you so distrustful that you make yourself ugly and throw banana peels in people’s path like a former landlady of mine who lived as a lonely miser after her fiancé dumped her for a fourteen-year-old girl and fled to Mexico.

6.  My wife told me that victims of sexual assault commonly gain in excess of fifty to a hundred pounds because they don’t want men to get close to them. We had a neighbor at our condo who was pretty but seventy pounds overweight and owned three pit-bulls whom she spent all her time with. My wife speculated she was a victim of an assault.

7.  Coming from divorced parents or parents living through an abusive marriage can make some children never want to get married. The statistics show that children of divorced parents have a 200 percent greater chance of getting divorced themselves.

 

Part Four. What forces in the environment “program” us in the deterministic sense to be  more successful?

 

1.  Having a family member with good social skills.

2.  Having a family member with a strong work ethic.

3.  Having a successful business nearby creates more traffic and more competition. For example, Starbucks makes other companies, such as Coffee Bean, more successful.

4.  The New England Patriots are the Starbucks of football. A lot of men hate the Patriots because men hate that which threatens their power. But the powerful are effective role models.

5.  Football was a garbage sport in the 1980s coached by rednecks with fat bellies. Not until Bill Walsh coached the 49ers in the late 1980s did all of football improve.

6.  Being raised with diverse food at an early age gives you a more sophisticated palate. Take my wife and me. She grew up on green Jell-O and a cheese sandwiches. I grew up on authentic Mexican cooking in San Jose, California, then moved to Berkeley where I ate Thai, Indian, and other spicy cuisines. It was in my environment. It wasn’t in hers.

7.  Determinism, obesity, and poverty: Poor people are fatter than middle class and rich people. There are many reasons for this, including the stress of poverty, which stimulates a “fat” hormone.

 

Part Five. Nihilism Is No Longer a “Choice” for Archie and Brother Leon

 

1.  nihilism, the obliteration of right and wrong, losing any stakes in life, nothing is at stake anymore, beyond caring is the shortest definition, a sort of spiritual death where you wander the world not caring if you live or die or amount to anything. Death of a moral compass.

2.  Anything Goes Morality or Moral relativism, make up your moral system depending on circumstances. Stealing, lying, cheating, and other immoral conduct can be rationalized under the right circumstances.

3.  Populist Fallacy: Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t I? Brother Leon presumably sees other teachers getting kickbacks, so he “joins the party.”

4.  Slippery slope is when your rationalizations lead to nihilism.

5.  In nihilism you reach the point where there are no rules so that “all is permitted” or “anything goes.”

6.  Inconsolable, learned helplessness, a sense that everything is futile so the only thing left in life is to “get yours.” In America, we have the nihilistic saying, “I’ve got mine. Get yours.”

7.  Point of No Return, like the cop who steals drugs 1,000 times.

8.  “Despair is not knowing it,” Kierkegaard

9.  empathy vs. self-pity, an eternal battle

10.               numbness, which leads to sadism, a perverted form of power in which one derives pleasure from inflicting cruelty upon others.

 

Part Six. Journal Entry:

For today’s essay variation, you are asked to explain determinism and free will in your introductory first page. Provide personal examples of determinism and free will, either in yourself or someone you know.

 

1A Chocolate War Quiz Due May 5th

 

In 500 words, write a psychological profile of Archie Costello. Be sure to have a topic sentence with relevant supporting details. 

The Chocolate War Lesson #3: The Dehumanization Evident in The Stanford Experiment Is Replicated at Trinity High School

 

Part One. What is the dehumanization process that encourages those in power (teachers, the Vigils) to become more cruel and ruthless in their imposition of power against their subjects (students)?

 

One. Strip a man of all his belongings, including clothes is powerful symbolically because his complete nakedness represents complete helplessness and powerlessness to both himself and the Vigils. In prison, they guards strip the prisoners of their clothes. While not as extreme, the Vigils do take the students to their hideout where the students are rendered helpless and in a way are “naked.”

 

Two. Establish the prisoners’ as reprobates and miscreants, rejects of society who are incapable of obeying the social contract without the intervention of the prison system. The Vigils will humiliate the students, explaining that they are losers who can only redeem themselves by fulfilling the Assignments. 

 

Three. Impose strict rules, which must be rigidly enforced to keep a sharp dividing line between the powerful and the powerless: There are rituals of “respect” that must be maintained lest the students suffer the Vigils’ wrath.

 

Four. The dehumanization can only occur in mutual interdependence: a cruel symbiosis between Vigils and students. This symbiosis is also evident between teachers and students when Brother Leon plays a humiliation game on Bailey (“Why do you cheat?”) and when the students go along with it, Leon says the whole class, a bunch of passive cowards, turned into Nazi Germany.

 

Five. Establish anonymity to “minimize each prisoner’s sense of uniqueness and prior identity.” The students mean nothing in the face of the Vigils’ power.

 

Six. Strip the men of their masculinity by restraining their movement through modified clothing that makes them move in a “feminine” manner. They’re wearing smocks that look like dresses. The Vigils’ strip the students of their masculinity by the Assignments, which are a reminder of who has all the power and who must be obedient.

 

Seven. Reinforce the prisoners’ sense of infantile helplessness by making them ask permission for the most rudimentary activities. Jerry will be punished for defying the Vigils. He can only refuse the chocolates under the Vigils’ order, but not on his own.

 

Eight. Treat the prisoners more like animals than humans. The Vigils make the students perform tedious acts that remind the students that they are insignificant, less human and more animal.

 

Nine. Reinforce the prisoners’ helplessness by taking away their sense of time. We can’t say the Vigils have this much power.

 

Ten. Reinforce power by assigning arbitrary, meaningless tasks and gratuitous acts of humiliation. Look again to the Assignment in which a screwdriver is used to unscrew everything in one of the teachers’ rooms. The Goober does it without question, but then is overcome with guilt for the effect it has on the teacher who has a nervous breakdown.

 

Eleven. Establish the Principle of Learned Helplessness. Here we arrive at a terrifying insight of human psychology: The more helpless people become, the less sympathetic they become. To the contrary, they become more and more contemptible.

 

 

Part Two. In many ways the power the Vigils have over the students parallels the Stanford Experiment. What lessons were learned from the experiment?

 

One. Normal people can be radically transformed into instruments of evil under specific “institutional pressures” which pit an authority figure against a subservient.

Two. An abusive environment can create psychotic and sadistic behavior associated with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Look what happens to Goober and perhaps Jerry.

 

Three. The mock prison environment is a metaphor for the abuse of power that can take place in a marriage, school, a job, and so on. An abusive spouse, teacher, administration, boss, co-workers, and so on can all create conditions analogous, perhaps to a lesser degree, to the Stanford Prison Experiment.

 

Part Three. How is this dehumanization replicated at Trinity High? See above.

Three. 10 Signs of Tribalism Established by the Vigils

 

 

1.  learn to create fear and intimidation to create power.

2.  Learn to make the rules for popularity

3.  Decide who will be the necessary pariahs; scapegoat an innocent victim to make your subjects prove their loyalty.

4.  Develop an us vs. them mentality

5.  Create a strict social hierarchy that must be followed

6.  Master the art of humiliation and mockery.

7.  Exercise social Darwinism in which the strong get stronger while the weak are despised.

8.  Provincial: tied to your locale; suspicious of outsiders, strangers.

9.  Resistant to change and new ideas. In other words, there is a high premium on ignorance.

10.               Code of silence whereby you never rat on a high member of the tribe even if his or her behavior is morally bankrupts or has inflicted death or injury on an innocent victim.

11.               Tribalism provides the three conditions for torture or inflicting violence against others: authority, routine, dehumanization or demonization.

 

 

Four. Analyze the sadistic dynamics between “captors and captives” in Chapters 5 and 6 with the Stanford Experiment. Consider the process of dehumanization.

1.  Goober is less human and more like “Vigil bait.”

2.  Archie prides himself on being able to “build a house next door,” come up with a quick solution for the Vigils, but he can’t find a solution to his own misery, his own personal sense that he’s lacking in humanity. He also feels a sense of “self-disgust,” especially when he’s performing an Assignment, interrogating a student.

3.  The interrogating takes place in a windowless room with guards and a bare light bulb. It’s essentially a prison cell.

4.  “Tell me why you’re here.” What does this establish? Who’s in charge, who’s got the power. Obedience.

5.  Archie tells Goober the Assignment isn’t personal, which shows the depersonalization or dehumanization of the subject performing the Assignment.

6.  The Goober passively accepts the Assignment. It is “doom,” something inescapable, no student has been able to fight against it.

7.  In Chapter 6, Brother Leon takes delight in humiliating Bailey, one of his best students, by accusing him of being a cheater. The scene underscores the powerful and the powerless.

 

Part Five. One Way of Approaching the Essay Assignment (If I Were Writing It)

In my first page, I would write about a time I compromised my humanity by conforming to some unwritten law, like the time I fought Ron Reynolds because he had said something in PE that had insulted me. I wasn’t really mad, but punched him to “defend my honor,” then felt guilty afterwards.

In my second page, I’d argue that The Chocolate War is about the dehumanization that occurs from power, conformity, and blind obedience. In my body paragraphs I’d show how Jerry, Goober, Brother Leon, and Archie compromised their humanity through blind obedience and the worship of power. In the process, I’d compare these characters to the awful truths learned in the Milgram and Stanford Experiments.

 

Part Six. Journal Entry

Write about a personal experience you had where the abuse of power resulted in the loss of someone’s humanity. You could write about a bully, a cruel teacher who humiliates students, or some authority figure. Or you could write about how you exercised power in a way that you made feel regretful and guilty afterwards. You could use this anecdote for the first page of your essay. 

Lesson #5 “Elephant” (472) by Raymond Carver

One. Reading Questions

1.  What kind of metaphorical meaning do we get from the story’s title? An elephant bears heavy burdens, it suffers, and it never forgets. This speaks perhaps to the narrator’s martyr complex.

2.  What is the narrator’s dependence or addiction? He’s dependent on people being dependent on him. He even lets his brother “play” him, like “play him for a fool.”

3.  What pattern of the narrator’s pathological behavior becomes evident on page 476? He’s giving money to everyone. Brother, mother, ex-wife, ex-wife’s lovers, daughter, daughter’s bum who fathered his daughter’s children, his son, etc. Everyone is on the “payroll.” He needs to feel wanted. His self-esteem must be in the toilet.

4.  How much threat is there when he says he’s going away to Australia? None because everyone knows he’s a junkie giver, an enabler.

5.  What is dangerous about enablers such as the narrator? They reinforce the sloth, laziness, and helplessness of others. They do in name of duty and sacrifice when in fact they are needy people.

6.  Why can’t an enabler like the narrator “just say no” and establish boundaries with people? Because he knows the truth: If he cuts off the money, he will be lonely and he cannot stand loneliness. The story shows the depths of suffering loneliness causes and the lengths people will go to in order to stave off loneliness.

7.  In addition to giving or “loaning” people money, what other kinds of enabling behavior do we see? Teachers who let students walk all over them. People who let their boyfriends, girlfriends, or spouses repeatedly cheat on them. People who do their friends’ homework for them. People who put up with any kind of abuse but don’t establish boundaries because they are afraid of being alone.

8.  How does being a martyr feed the narrator’s ego? He feels wanted. He feels needed. He feels like he makes a Herculean sacrifice for the sake of others. This in turn makes him feel morally superior. But he fails to see the truth: That he is being used.

9.  What is the bitter and ironic truth about enabling others? The people we enable do not appreciate our generosity. They hate and resent us because in part they know they will never repay us and our sick symbiotic relationship with them is forever a reminder of this gut-wrenching fact.

10. What are the qualities of symbiosis? 

1. No boundaries. 

2. Mutual helplessness.

3. Mutual addiction.

4. Mutual denial. "I'm not dependent on so and so."

5. One is sometimes the "dominant" and the other is the "sidekick" but in reality these roles can change. The "sidekick" can actually be the one in control. 

6. The two dig in their heels and say, "It's us against the world." They see themselves as a fortress against a world of hostile forces.

7. The two people live in a condition of ritual and routine that results in stagnation.

8. One becomes jealous and threatened when the other faces the possibility of positive change.

9. The two often hate each other but stay together because they are afraid of the unknown.

10. The two often see their condition as "normal" because they've acclimated to their private hell. They're numb and cannot even comprehend the real nature of their pain and despair. 

Part Two. Write About a Symbiotic Relationship:

In a paragraph, describe two people you know who are dependent on each other in an unhealthy way so that the two could be said to be addicted to each other. Secondly, it could be said that the two reinforce each other's helplessness. 

Part Three. Essay Option

In a page or two describe two people you know who exist in a condition of symbiosis. Then in 3 pages or so, compare the symbiosis in "Elephants" with the symbiosis in "Feathers." Or simply focus on one of the stories. 

Lesson #4: "A Small, Good Thing" (376)

 

One. Reading Questions

 

1.   What is “a small, good thing,” exactly? Hand-crafted individual care stripped of pretentiousness and bearing authenticity. “A small, good thing,” is a refreshing break from all the B.S. that saturates our lives every day. B.S. is insulting and manipulative and impersonal. People B.S. on autopilot.

2.   What forces in the story are presented in stark contrast? The authenticity described above and bloated, impersonal egotistical pretentiousness. For the latter, see the description of the doctor on page 382.

3.   Who consoles the parents for the loss of their son, the doctor or the baker? Why? The doctors read from scripts. They’re like robots. In contrast, the baker connects on a personal level. He offers them food, which is a metaphor.

4.   How does Dr. Francis fail to provide empathy on pages 396 and 397? He makes the married couple leave when they should stay.

5.   In contrast, how does the baker express authentic empathy on page 404? Rather than inflate who he is, he humbles himself and strips himself of all pretension or rather shows that he is completely absent of pretension. He talks about self-doubt and loneliness, not pleasant topics, but they’re real topics, unlike the B.S. dished out by the doctors.

 

Part Two. The Opposite of Empathy, the BE-ESSER

The story is about the dangers of being a B.S. Artist or a BE-ESSER

 

1.  BE-ESSERS are often too intoxicated by their own BS and fail to see that others are not as impressed with it as they are. In other words, they suffer from an inflated self-esteem that has no correspondence to reality, what we call a narcissist. 

2.  BE-ESSERS often feel that they’re “superior BS” ability gives them license to do anything so that they have no boundaries.

3.  BE-ESSERS can’t stop BSing even when the situation demands it.

4.  BE-ESSERS tend to dig themselves into a deeper and deeper hole as they continue BSing.

5.  BE-ESSERS are more concerned with image than substance. They cannot tolerate people having the “wrong impression” of them. 

6.  BE-ESSERS create a fictional persona that is so addicting they don’t know how to be real anymore and live the rest of their lives as compulsive liars.

7.  BE-ESSERS can’t achieve intimacy because their whole life is a performance act.

8.  BE-ESSERS are good at drumming up feelings of self-righteousness even when they are grossly wrong. In other words, they end up believing their own BS. 

9.  BE-ESSERS spend so much time puffing themselves up that they have too much pride to admit when they’re wrong.

10.               BE-ESSERS rationalize their lies by justifying the means with the end. 

 

See the book On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt in which he says that bullshit is worse than lying, that bullshit is defined by pretentiousness, misrepresentation and all the insidious things we use to puff ourselves up such as false modesty, sycophantism, omission of certain facts, slight exaggeration, etc. The B.S artist does not lie because for him there is no truth. Everything is B.S. The result of this attitude is nihilism.

 

Part Three. Journal Entry

Contrast two people you know, a BEE-ESSER and someone who embodies a “small, good thing.”

Part Four. Reviewing Your Essay Options

Option #1: The War Between the Ego and Empathy in Where I’m Calling From

In page one, profile someone who suffers “the type of swollen ego that results in solipsism and isolation from sanity, maturity, and the human race.” Then in your second page, profile someone who embodies the “sweet grace of empathy” and show how this person’s empathy connects him or her to others.

 

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

The above characters are antithetical to each other. Similarly, the stories pit characters at war between their egos and the liberation of empathy. Egotism in the stories (choose no fewer than 3) of Raymond Carver has grave consequences, which include _______________________, _________________________, ________________________, and ____________________________. In contrast, empathy has a healing effect on the downtrodden evidenced by _________________________, _______________________, __________________________, and ______________________________.

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used fromWhere I’m Calling From, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

 

Option #2: Redemptive and Misguided Love

In a 5-page essay, contrast misguided love (“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” “Feathers,” “Elephant”) and redemptive love (“A Small, Good Thing” and “Cathedral”) in the aforementioned stories.

Option #3: Symbiosis

In a 5-page essay explain the meaning of symbiosis or unhealthy mutual dependence in “Feathers” and “Elephant.”  Before your comparison of the two stories, write a one-page introduction about an unhealthy symbiotic you’ve observed from your personal experience.

Option #4: The Chimera

Compare Mel McGuiness’ chimera from “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” with the chimera that afflicts the couple in “Feathers.” Before you compare the chimeras from the two stories, begin with a one-page introduction in which you describe a chimera that once afflicted you or someone else you know. 

Option #5: Solipsism

In 1 or 2 pages, profile someone you know who descended into the private hell of solipsism. Then compare in 3 or 4 pages the solipsism evident in Mel from "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and the narrator (before his transformation) in "Cathedral."

Option #6: The Disaffected

In a page, profile someone you know who is disaffected. Then analyze the causes and effects of the disaffected characters in "Cathedral" and "Feathers."

Option #7: Compare the BS of Mel ("What We Talk About When We Talk About Love") and the doctors in "A Small, Good Thing." In your first page, profile a BS-er you know. Then in your thesis write that Mel and the doctors have nothing to redemptive to offer because their BS inevitably results in solipsism. The connection between BS and solipsism is evident by _____________, _________________, _______________, and _____________________.

1. BS makes us forget the truth.

2. BS makes us disrespect others.

3. BS makes us feed our ego.

4. BS creates a hole so deep that we can't get out of it. 

Some Research Links

Cathedral

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

A Small, Good Thing

Symbiosis According to Erich Fromm

Symbiosis and the Fear of Freedom

David Foster Wallace and Solipsism

Part Five. Reviewing Some Key Terms for Your Essay

Disaffected, adjective; Disaffection, noun:

To be disaffected is to be emotionally withdrawn, disengaged with the world, depressed. Disaffection is the condition of having given up on life and in essence being a member of the walking dead.

 

 The Causes of Disaffection

1.  You lack confidence to engage with others so you withdraw into yourself. Perhaps you were hurt in the past and don’t want to get hurt again, so you avoid people.

2.  You get married more for convenience and to shelter you from the world.

3.  You become addicted to your routines, which shut out the outside world.

4.  You are reflexively hostile to anyone new because they represent a threat to your existence. You hate change.

5.  You act like a churlish (grouchy) know-it-all who has all the answers, a person who dismisses everything as a “joke” and “utter nonsense.”

6.  You are incapable of listening to others. The only thing you listen to the Cynical Voice constantly grumbling inside your head.

7.  You are lethargic in your self-centeredness and numb yourself with various addictions in order to undergo your “slow death.”

8.  You teach yourself that there is no hope for change or a better life so you succumb to learned helplessness.

Solipsism

  Solipsism, failing to connect with others, is a form of insanity. The telling signs of solipsism are self-pity, resentment, and narcissism (you’re the only one who matters, your suffering is worse than everyone else’s, your grievances are more compelling to everyone else’s). Tell the students about the doctor whose wife left him and the student who never dated after 20 years. These are two examples of people who are withdrawn into themselves and cannot connect with the outside world and as such are insane. 

Symbiosis

Symbiosis in the context of Raymond Carver's stories is a mutual interdependence between two people in which both parties become more and more crippled and dependent on each other. In other words, the one person becomes the other's addiction and vice versa. Some of the features of symbiosis are the following:

1. A sense of panic and anxiety when the two people are separated.

2. A compulsion for the two people to insulate themselves from the rest of the world.

3. A growing sense of weakness so that the individuals feel helpless with the other's presence.

4. Stagnation and monotony as the symbiotic pair become addicted to routine and ritual.

5. An unconscious resentment for the other since deep down both parties know that the other person is a disease and a pernicious influence. 

1A Spring 2010 Quiz #2 for March 31

McMahon has said in lecture that Carver's characters are saddled with a despair, a loneliness, and a private hell so engrained in their lives that they are numb to their personal hell and live in their abject misery without even being aware of how depressed they are. 

In 500 words, illustrate McMahon's statement by analyzing no fewer than 3 characters from the Carver stories you have read. I recommend you take a good look at "Feathers," "Elephants," and "Cathedral."

Lesson #3: “Feathers” (332) by Raymond Carver

One. Reading Questions

1.  Explain the essay’s title. Iridescence, something that intoxicates, chimera, metaphor.

2.  What evidences the narrator’s empty existence on the first page? The monotony becomes "normal," that is it becomes something the husband and wife become used to. In fact, their life is one of hellish loneliness and depression, yet they're not aware of this fact. To be depressed on not know you're depressed is very dangerous because you do desperate things unconsciously such as pursue chimeras, illusions, projections of your own desires. 

3.  On page 333, what evidences the narrator’s dysfunctional marriage? The wife feels threatened by a simple dinner. How insular is she? What kind of stagnation are we talking about here?

4.  What reasons can we infer that the narrator and his wife don’t want children? Do children force parents into a social world? What else?

5.  How does “Feathers” repeat the same themes in “Cathedral”? See page 335. Openness vs. closed system of living. Edenic images similar to the paradise seen from the Cathedral. The Peacock is Otherness like the cathedral. The shimmering Otherness of the peacock is juxtaposed with the pedestrian banal working-class existence of Bud and his wife.

6.  How and why does Carver juxtapose the different economic classes in this story? Is he painting Fran as some anal-retentive middle-class suburbanite? See page 342

7.  How does Bud’s wish to fix his wife’s teeth repeat themes in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”? Living love vs. thinking about love.

8.  What significance is there in having an ugly baby in the story? 349, 350 The baby contrasts the peacock, the reality behind the chimera or ideal.

9.  Why did Fran and the narrator have a baby after visiting Bud and his wife? What were the motives? What were the effects of acting on this compulsion? 354, 355 Quick fix? Living vicariously through others?

10.               The story’s ending is about what? The reality of banality and the dream of Otherness? Looking to be razzle-dazzled by something that ends up being incurably ordinary? We seem to love an idea about life, marriage, having children, etc., but not the reality of it.

 

Part Two. The Chimera’s Definition, Causes and Effects

 

1.  The chimera is a mirage that draws us in slowly, starting with a burp or a trifle, a tease, an iridescent color that flashes before our eyes or it hits us over the head. In either case, it grows into an obsession and consumes all our energies, thoughts, and dreams.

2.  The chimera is based on unconscious longings for class ascent, acceptance, love, popularity, wealth, parental unconditional love (Rosebud), the Chanel Number Five Moment, distinction, proving our doubters that they were wrong.

3.  We project our fantasy onto a tabula rasa.

4.  Often the chimera is a panacea, a cure-all for all our woes.

5.  The Absolute Fallacy (success, fitness, perfection, perfect absolute relationship)

6.  The Transcendence Fallacy

7.  The Bitch Goddess Fallacy

8.  The inevitable despair of the chimera. George Bernard Shaw said there are two great tragedies in life: Not getting what we want and getting it.

9.  The cycle of ongoing chimeras, people who never learn and who go in circles, jumping from one chimera to the next.

10.               The paradox of the chimera: Chimeras destroy us but they also feed our dreams and in some ways give us strength, drive, motivation, and vitality that we otherwise wouldn’t have.

11.               The need for the chimera: We must have stars in the horizon for which he can row our oars.

 

Examples of chimera (have students come up with some):

 

1.  The low-carb diet or the South Beach Diet

2.  Yoga

3.  A Lexus IS350

4.  Viagra

5.  Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft

6.  Dianobol

7.  Having a six-pack

8.  Cosmetic surgery, botox or nose job or implants.

9.  G-Star Jeans (underground store for special jeans, not the ones you can buy at Nordstrom)

10.               the cognoscenti.

11.               Becoming famous

12.               Angelina Jolie; she’s more than a human. She’s become the great bitch goddess, every man’s dream and every woman’s nightmare. The fantasy of the seductress.

13.               Jennifer Aniston, the myth of the good girl, the myth of innocence.

14.               Celebrity of all kinds, an autograph, a sighting.

15.               Las Vegas

16.               Palos Verdes (my neighbors in Torrance are bitter that they haven’t moved to PV yet. Peevers.

17.               UCLA

18.               iPod

19.               Anything sold on the QVC network

20.               Marriage. Not all marriages but most are built on the Goody Box chimera. When I want a goody I reach into the goody box. But what happens when all the goodies run out.

21.               Me-Time. People who have lots of me-time are miserable.

 

1.  a panacea like a Fad diet

2.  a rite of passage like a car representing freedom, independence, and sexual attraction.

3.  a form of medication for depression or some deeply acute problem that you bandage with a simple solution; you buy a wardrobe to cover a restlessness and anxiety that haunts you.

4.  the myth of romantic absolute, fueled by crappy love songs.

5.  a childhood longing, like Christmas lights and Budweiser sign.

 

Part Three. 

Option #4: The Chimera

Compare Mel McGuiness’ chimera from “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” with the chimera that afflicts the couple in “Feathers.” Before you compare the chimeras from the two stories, begin with a one-page introduction in which you describe a chimera that once afflicted you or someone else you know. 

Journal Entry to Prepare for Chimera Essay

Write about a chimera you became obsessed with, how it propelled you into the world of solipsism, and how it crushed you with devastating disappointment.

Lesson #2: "Cathedral" (356) by Raymond Carver

Part One. Reading Questions

 

One. What is the irony of using a blind character in the story as a way of developing one of its major themes? See page 391 where the narrator recounts the blind man burying his wife and how “he had never seen her.” Who’s really blind?

Two. Explain the title. A Cathedral is where miracles happen. The miracle is that a dead man will be resurrected. The dead man is equated with the image of skeletons that occur later in the story during the TV show. Clearly, the narrator is dead and reborn by the story’s end.

Three. How does the narrator reveals himself in the first paragraph? He’s a defensive ignoramus and a man so isolated from the complexity of the human condition that he is a walking corpse. He’s a dead man. Later we find that he’s friendless. His wife says he has no friends. He lives inside himself, a prisoner of his own solipsism, which is fueled in part by fear.

Four. What is foreshadowed in the second paragraph? Robert’s sensitivity, tracing the wife’s face, will be passed on to the narrator at the story’s end.

Five. What is the narrator’s real source of jealousy? Dead people don’t like to see people living life fully. They want everyone to be as dead and miserable as they are. The narrator resents the blind man for living life fully.

Six. What do we know about the narrator’s habits? They’re reductionary. He does the same rituals over and over to close himself from emotion.  The TV watching, the fear of silence, the fear of conversation, insomnia, the depression, the smoking dope until he can crash in bed. The blind man represents change, a threat, an interference with his routine. Our routines comfort us, but they also imprison and eventually kill us.

Seven. What is the story’s turning point? Where Robert apologizes for monopolizing the talk with the wife. He shows empathy, something the narrator is lacking. He shows he has this quality, empathy, which evinces Robert’s maturity and gives him the credentials to be trusted as a parent figure for the narrator who is essentially a frightened child. Once that dynamic is established, the miracle can begin.

 

Eight. What contradiction about maturity do we learn in the story? The adult is relaxed enough to be a child and possess a child’s hunger to learn new things. We see this on page 397 when they’re watching TV. One of life’s contradictions is that we have to be mature enough to be children, to be relaxed enough to let go and let our child explore.

Nine. How do we know the narrator is a scared little kid emotionally? He keeps saying, “I’m not doing so well, am I?” He needs an adult’s approval.

Ten. How does the narrator change at the end of the story? In the beginning he is disaffected. By the end, gets excited, his legs become numb, he’s possessed with a sense of urgency and life purpose. He says at one point, “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.”

 

Part Two. Disaffected, adjective; Disaffection, noun:

To be disaffected is to be emotionally withdrawn, disengaged with the world, depressed. Disaffection is the condition of having given up on life and in essence being a member of the walking dead.

 

Part Three. The Causes of Disaffection

1.  You lack confidence to engage with others so you withdraw into yourself. Perhaps you were hurt in the past and don’t want to get hurt again, so you avoid people.

2.  You get married more for convenience and to shelter you from the world.

3.  You become addicted to your routines, which shut out the outside world.

4.  You are reflexively hostile to anyone new because they represent a threat to your existence. You hate change.

5.  You act like a churlish (grouchy) know-it-all who has all the answers, a person who dismisses everything as a “joke” and “utter nonsense.”

6.  You are incapable of listening to others. The only thing you listen to the Cynical Voice constantly grumbling inside your head.

7.  You are lethargic in your self-centeredness and numb yourself with various addictions in order to undergo your “slow death.”

8.  You teach yourself that there is no hope for change or a better life so you succumb to learned helplessness.

 

Part Four. Journal Entry

In a paragraph, describe someone you show who has over time become disaffected. (McMahon: talk about the divorced doctor)

Part Five. Related Essay Option #6

The Disaffected

In a page, profile someone you know who is disaffected. Then analyze the causes and effects of the disaffected characters in "Cathedral" and "Feathers."

1A Lesson Spring Semester March 15: Raymond Carver

Essay Options for Where I'm Calling From

One: The War Between the Ego and Empathy in Where I’m Calling From

In page one, profile someone who suffers “the type of swollen ego that results in solipsism and isolation from sanity, maturity, and the human race.” Then in your second page, profile someone who embodies the “sweet grace of empathy” and show how this person’s empathy connects him or her to others.

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

The above characters are antithetical to each other. Similarly, the stories pit characters at war between their egos and the liberation of empathy. Egotism in the stories (choose no fewer than 3) of Raymond Carver has grave consequences, which include _______________________, _________________________, ________________________, and ____________________________. In contrast, empathy has a healing effect on the downtrodden evidenced by _________________________, _______________________, __________________________, and ______________________________.

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Where I’m Calling From, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

Option #2: Redemptive and Misguided Love

In a 5-page essay, contrast misguided love (“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” “Feathers,” “Elephant”) and redemptive love (“A Small, Good Thing” and “Cathedral”) in the aforementioned stories.

Option #3: Symbiosis

In a 5-page essay explain the meaning of symbiosis or unhealthy mutual dependence in “Feathers” and “Elephant.”  Before your comparison of the two stories, write a one-page introduction about an unhealthy symbiotic you’ve observed from your personal experience.

Option #4: The Chimera

Compare Mel McGuiness’ chimera from “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” with the chimera that afflicts the couple in “Feathers.” Before you compare the chimeras from the two stories, begin with a one-page introduction in which you describe a chimera that once afflicted you or someone else you know. 

Option #5: Solipsism

In 1 or 2 pages, profile someone you know who descended into the private hell of solipsism. Then compare in 3 or 4 pages the solipsism evident in Mel from "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and the narrator (before his transformation) in "Cathedral."

Option #6: The Disaffected

In a page, profile someone you know who is disaffected. Then analyze the causes and effects of the disaffected characters in "Cathedral" and "Feathers."

Some Research Links

Cathedral

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

A Small, Good Thing

Symbiosis According to Erich Fromm

Symbiosis and the Fear of Freedom

David Foster Wallace and Solipsism

Introduction to Story: 

Mel suffers from self-certitude or rectitude, the conviction of that he is right, which is a drug clouding his powers of reason and his ability to see the truth. As a result of his love for hearing the sound of his own bloviating voice and the certitude that his voice affords him, Mel thinks he knows the “higher truth” of love. But to the contrary, he is delusional in his orientation toward love, both in his ideas and his actions. In fact, the story pits Mel’s delusion of love, an oversimplification rooted in idealism, with the reality of love, a messy tangle of complexities and contradictions that rebel against Mel’s easy truisms and aphorisms about love.

Mel believes in idealized love, which ironically is a standard of love he fails miserably, while the story shows there are dozens of types of love, which defy easy classification:

1.  chimera love

2.  chivalry love (heroic or selfless or altruistic love)

3.  honeymoon or infatuation love

4.  platonic love

5.  demonic love (the underbelly of obsessed love)

6.  Mel’s self-love or narcissism

Part Two. Reading Questions

1.  What ways does Mel represent the kind of egotism that precludes understanding, sympathy, and empathy? This cardiologist knows nothing about the real heart because he’s obsessed with the hearing the sound of his own voice, pontificating, bloviating, and bullying his opinions and higher truths over others. His boastful pride compels him to dominate all discussions. He is, to use modern parlance, a know-it-all. Even his theology studies render him ignorant about spiritual matters. He worships his Ego and Smug Self-Certitude more than he cares about love in the real world.

2.  What does the title suggest about the story’s theme? When we talk about love, we talk about everything BUT love. He who talks about love knows nothing about love. Why? Because in part love is not intellectual. Nor is it imposing opinions over others.

3.  Why does love so often result in hate and violence? Terri discusses her previous man Ed on page 170. You’re vulnerable to be betrayed on the deepest level. You’ve stuck your emotions on the table and are in a position to get hurt resulting in rage and sometimes violence. Once you’re in a relationship so deeply, it’s hard to escape so sometimes you feel cornered and this is where abuse occurs. Even though Mel doesn’t want to admit it, often love can go awry, turn into a passion gone wrong. Terri knows this from experience. Love can be the rich custard flan tres leche caramel or love can curdle into rancid chunks of cottage cheese. Mel wants a tidy theory about love that comforts him, but he is embracing a mythic over simplification of love, not the truth. In truth, love has a dark demonic side. Most violent crimes are crimes of passion.

4.  What evidence is there that Mel is a narcissist completely ignorant of love? He says after arguing with Terri about love, “That man tried to kill me.” He makes every conversation about himself, rather than coming to an understanding. See page 171.

5.  What stage of love is the narrator Nick in with his woman Laura? Eros, honeymoon, infatuation. See page 172. His love is untested because at this stage it’s an “easy love.” See page 174. Most Americans have an infantile notion of love as being that first stage in which love is a giant goody box. Whenever you want a goody, you reach into the goody box until the goodies are gone and then you get a new goody box.

6.  What is Mel’s obsession? Love. He always turns the subject toward love? Why? Because he hungers for a kind of ideal love that will ameliorate his raging egotism. He knows deep down something is wrong with him but his ego prevents him from laying it out on the table. Mel’s hunger for love is noble and true and authentic but his quest for love, finding a theory instead of love’s reality, is MISGUIDED and therefore doomed to fail. The more Mel searches for the perfect theory of love, the lonelier he becomes and this makes him hunger for love all the more. Thus Mel is trapped in a vicious cycle.

7.  How does Mel respond to Terry’s plea for empathy and understanding on page 172? He’s supremely unconcerned with her needs, only his need to be right.

8.  Why is Mel in part insecure or threatened by Ed’s demonic love? Because Ed was willing to die for love, something Mel can’t do because Mel cannot let go and lose control. His relationships must be very controlled due to his insecurities.

9.  How does Mel’s immature character force Terry to act? Like a mother. Mamma love. Too many women are mammas for their men. See page 175 as Terry assuages Mel’s insecure ego. Too many men are trapped in Mamma Love. They become helpless cripples nestling in the Womb of a relationship that renders them infants forever and ever.

10.               What journey are the characters embarking on? An exploration of love without defenses, without preconceptions. The alcohol is like a truth serum and they unshed their defenses and only when they have been reduced to a tabula rasa or blank slate can they see love in a new way. See page 176. A “forbidden” journey.

11.               Where does Mel show some humanity and humility? He expresses self-doubt and concedes that maybe Terri was right about love going bad. Yes, love curdles, goes rank. See page 176.

12.               What is Mel searching for on page 177. Permanence and transcendence. These are nice qualities of love, but they are absolutes and ideals and suggest a man who is more in love with the IDEA of love more than love itself.

13.               What makes Mel an interesting character? He can long for a “higher love” but be full of a serpent’s spit, venom, and hate. See page 178.

14.               What is one of Mel’s chief regrets? He never followed his passion, food. He probably became a doctor for status and now he feels compromised as a human being and dreams for some kind of fantasy love, an ideal love. See page 180 where Mel longs for chivalry. Chivalry is just a mask, a form of “armor” that prevents Mel from getting his hands dirty in life and facing his demons. See page 181.

15.               What if anything is profound about the story’s ending? 

 

Part Three. What 10 Things Should Mel Do to be a Happier, More Loving Person?

1.  He needs to take a “chill pill,” that is, learn to relax. He gets too worked up over things and as a result he becomes blind to his anger, egotism and obnoxiousness.

2.  He needs to become a better listener, listen more, talk less.

3.  He needs to learn to accept himself. He appears to be consumed by self-hatred. Why? Because he demands a perfect love from himself, an ideal life and he knows he’s fallen short. Worse, he does nothing to close the gap between his behavior and his so-called higher ideals. He is frustrated with himself and he lashes out on others.

4.  He needs to accept the demonic in others and himself in order to be less demonic. People who don’t acknowledge their inner demons are more dangerous than those who don’t.

5.  He needs to open his mind to definitions of love that are less ideal than his own. Perhaps he should incorporate a “dirty hands” philosophy.

6.  He needs to confront and acknowledge his insecurities rather than being in denial about them as he rages on Terry.

7.  He needs to see how he treats others, a sign of maturity, and maybe he’ll act more loving instead of talking about love all the time.

8.  He needs to realize his own cowardice and egotism have brought him frustration and unhappiness instead of blaming others.

9.  He needs to develop the courage to be honest when he’s sober, not just when he’s drunk.

10.               He needs to learn how to have conversations with people rather than lecturing people.

 

Part Four. Filling in your mapping components by answering a key question.

 

Egotism in the stories (choose no fewer than 3) of Raymond Carver has grave consequences, which include _______________________, _________________________, ________________________, and ____________________________. In contrast, empathy has a healing effect on the downtrodden evidenced by _________________________, _______________________, __________________________, and ______________________________.

Two Important Questions: Your Answers Will Outline Your Essay Number 1

Question One. What are the dangerous consequences of Mel’s egotism?

1.  Mel is obsessed with being right in his theory of love more than he is interested in connecting with people by listening to them and empathizing with them and making compromises with them.

2.  Mel is more interested in the idea of love, which assures his ego, than he is with real love, a complex beast that threatens his ego. Real love isn’t as safe as idealized love. Abstractions about love are just theories, stale formulas relegated to effete college professors. Abstractions don’t cut it in the real world. People tell me you can read parenting books until the cows come home, but until you parent a child, you know nothing about parenting. Mel can talk about love until he’s blue in the face, but until he really loves, he is an ignoramus about love.

3.  Mel’s egotism has blinded him from a painful fact. He doesn’t have conversations with people. He talks down and lectures to them. This disconnects him and pushes him into the world of solipsism in which he becomes the only reality.

4.  Solipsism, failing to connect with others, is a form of insanity. The telling signs of solipsism are self-pity, resentment, and narcissism (you’re the only one who matters, your suffering is worse than everyone else’s, your grievances are more compelling to everyone else’s). Tell the students about the doctor whose wife left him and the student who never dated after 20 years. These are two examples of people who are withdrawn into themselves and cannot connect with the outside world and as such are insane.

Question Two: What are the healing effects of empathy?

1.  Empathy, the ability to stand in someone else’s shoes, is liberation and “a vacation” from the prison of self-centered egotism.

2.  Empathy reveals strength and security. Only strong, mature, secure people are relaxed enough to let go of their ego so they can listen and be of service to others.

3.  Empathy gives us real self-worth because we actually see the value of us helping people. In contrast, egotism is a false self-worth because we have to constantly aggrandize ourselves with vanity. Vanity is the Mother of False Self-Worth.

4.  Empathy allows us to listen. Listening helps bring in new information, which forces us to let go of our old, stale ideas. Often we need new information to cleanse us of our old, stagnant ideas and to establish a tabula rasa or blank slate so we can begin anew.

 

Part Five. Student Activity

Think of someone you know who suffers from egotism and solipsism. This one-page profile could be used for the first page of your essay. 

1A Lesson Plan for “Love and War in Cyberspace” and "The Consequences--Undoing Sanity" (299)

One. The Myth of Technological Panacea: Technology will create a paradise on Earth.

A myth is a fantasy, a delusion, or a belief system that animates people to their own detriment.

Two. Types of Myths

1.    iPod is the myth of creativity and being a member of the in-crowd.

2.    The CDC (Center for Disease Control) offers the myth of assurance: Government is taking care of us, but the swine flu crisis shows the myth for what it is: We’re helpless.

3.    The Myth of Masculinity: “Real men” don’t need gadgets and toys to be masculine. In truth, men rely on fast cars for higher testosterone levels.

4.    The Myth of Technology: It will afford me the power to transform myself, to be superior to others, and to connect in deeper more meaningful ways. “Love and War in Cyberspace” shows the opposite to be true. The more these nerds rely on the myth of technology, the more dysfunctional, emotionally retarded and insane they become.

5.    The Myth of the Group: a tech society or a fan base for a professional sports team, Nike Talk, and son on: You belong to the in-group and rely on shared community experience to overcome your loneliness. To unify themselves, they stir up foment and hostility against the mythic out-group, Los Otros.

6.    The Myth of Hedonism: Pursuing pleasure, thrill, and excitement will give me happiness. Hedonists are self-indulgent people and one thing self-indulgent people all have in common: They are miserable.

7.    The Myth of Wealth: Look at the Lotto winners: 95% of them end up bankrupt, divorced, and in despair.

8.    The Myth of Freedom: It is unlimited and offers you boundless possibilities. In fact, freedom requires focus and freedom. Consider Tennessee Williams after he became famous.

9.    The Myth of Self-Preservation: People who hoard things and “look out for number one” are doomed to a life of failure and demise. Consider the people ofLeningrad during the German Seize of World War II.

10.                   The Myth of Success: Discipline and hard work guarantee that you will rise above mediocrity or achieve a goal. This is not an absolute truth. It’s a relative truth. Discipline and hard work increase your probability of success but do not guarantee it.

11.                   The Talent Myth: Geniuses succeed. No. More often than not, those who follow the 10,000 Hour Rule achieve success.

12.                   The Love Myth: The infatuation that you feel during the first few months of a relationship must sustain its intensity or else “you’re not really in love.”

13.                   The Relationship Myth: I’m miserable because I’m lonely. If only I could find a mate, I’d be happy. Wrong. The reason why you don’t have a mate is because you have profound defects in your personality that repel people. A boyfriend or a girlfriend will only stick a band-aid over your psychological warts.

14.                   The College Graduation Myth: As soon as you finish your college education, you’ll be in cruise control. Wrong. There is no such thing as cruise control. There is no such thing as an easy life.

15.                   The Hakuna Matata Myth. There is no paradise with easy happiness and no worries. Life is a struggle.

16.                   The Perfection Myth: The more beautiful and “perfect” you become, the more happy you will be. Look at anorexics, plastic surgery mongers and the like. They are all ugly and frightening and appear like phantoms from our worst nightmares.

17.                   The Television Myth: If I’m not on TV, if I’m not interviewed on the E Channel, if I don’t star in a reality show, I am a NOBODY. The Octomom and the couple from John and Kate Plus 8, and wannabes on American Idolembody this myth.

18.                   The College Professor Myth: My students listen to me because I am a special person with a unique sense of humor and intellectual brilliance that my students find captivating. Wrong. Your students, if they’re polite, listen to you out of courtesy. But their minds are filled with all sorts of interests, which don’t include you in the slightest. Your students are concerned with paying their bills, their relationships, their job, and furthering their career. You’re not as special as you think, Professor, so stick your macro-cephalic ego where it belongs, chump.

19.                    The Marriage Myth. “I want to get married because marriage is a Big Goody Box and whenever I want a goody, all I have to do is reach into the Goody Box and get one. Yeah!” This mythic conception of marriage has all the maturity of an adenoidal teenage male. What happens when the “goodies,” as you call them, run out? You dump your spouse and find a new Goody Box.

 

Part Three. A Failed Experiment in the Myth of Unlimited Freedom. We learn that real freedom requires conditions. Therefore unlimited freedom, the kind we see at Walden, is a false freedom.

 

 

Unlimited Freedom at Walden Is a False Freedom

 

1. E-mail communication is not free. There must be face-to-face accountability; if you can’t say what you have to say to another human’s face, you are a coward and a fraud. Too many people hiding behind their computers speaking reckless thoughts from their mind.
2. E-mail communication is dangerous because you’re hiding under the delusional safety of your computer. In fact, your raw unedited thoughts are dangerous and inappropriate. Your thoughts should be measured, contemplated, and edited. That’s what makes you a mature, thinking person. The stream of consciousness that spews forth in an e-mail is the rant and tantrum of a spoiled child.

 

3. Squandering all your free time on an addiction is not freedom; it’s enslavement and the Multi-User Dungeon gamers are slaves to their addiction. See 380
4. Technology without wisdom will kill you. These renters have the broadest band-width in the world, but they can’t handle it. The computer modem attaches to their brain and their minds become warped; they go insane. See page 383
5. Walden gives the loners and computer geeks a sense of belonging, which you need to be free, but this is false belonging. This is symbiosis; an unhealthy mutual dependence that results in retarding your emotional growth. See 381
6. A cohesive healthy community must have protocols of etiquette to create a sense of safety, respect, and dignity. But there are no boundaries at Walden. See the “bombastic” and violent language on page 386.
7. A healthy community has diversity of people with diversity of ideas to challenge one’s way of seeing the world. But the people at Walden are a monolithic tribe. They’re all the same and as a result they’re maladapted to the real world, which is diverse. The world isn’t a bunch of computer geeks and hiding in a cell with other computer geeks isn’t the answer. See page 383
8. See page 390 in which we learn that hedonism leads to despair. That kind of extreme behavior is always followed by a crash. Your whole life can’t be a party. You’ll burn-out. You’ll find yourself lost. People who party all the time age faster than the rest of us. They look old. Hedonism wears you out. It’s not freedom. It’s a desperate attempt to escape your sense of loneliness and isolation and it never works. Read Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving.
9. There are no moral absolutes and no sense that this is right and this is wrong; as a result, Walden is a place of chaos and confusion.
10. A Virtual World is a place where you don’t find freedom. You lose yourself to insanity. 

 

Part Three. The 8 Characteristics of Virtual World

 

1. The VW allows you to escape your daily frustrations.
2. The VW allows you to escape from the intense pain of having no intimacy in your life, both romantic and social.
3. The VW becomes a way of procrastinating your responsibilities.
4. The VW can incite chemical reactions in your brain that become addictive.
5. The VW presents you with manageable challenges, giving you a sense of control and achievement when you would otherwise feel overwhelmed by a lack of control and a sense of personal failure.
6. It’s easier to go back and delete your mistakes in a VW and star all over again than it is in real life.
7. The VW allows you to erase or hide your real self, the one you either despise or feel is inadequate or both, and it allows you to recreate yourself with bells and whistles so that you have more confidence.
8. The VW provides you with a sense of belonging in the “online community” when in the real world you’re overcome by a sense of constant loneliness and isolation. 

 

 

McMahon’s thesis for “Love and War in Cyberspace”

 

Cause and Effect Thesis Uses "can be attributed to" and "and results in"

Example:

The swine flu hysteria can be attributed to its unpredictable mutability, disproportionate coverage of a few deaths (far less than the common flu), the stigma of an animal-to-human contagion and this hysteria will result in wild rumors inflaming public anxiety, overreactions (canceled cruises, abstaining from pork, etc.) and hypochondria (people misinterpreting every sniffle or cough as a sign of "sure death"). 

The organic food movement, as chronicled in Michael Pollan's masterful essay, can be attributed to ___________________, ________________, ________________, and results in ___________________, __________________, and ____________________. 

The intoxicating, addictive nature of war, Hedges argues, can be attributed to ________________, _________________, and ___________________, and results in ______________________, ___________________, and _________________________. 

Walden is a failed experiment in the promise of unlimited freedom through technology. This woeful failure can be attributed to ________________, ___________________, and ____________________, and results in ___________________, ___________________, and __________________________________.

 

Katy Vine’s essay shows us the dangers of living in a Virtual World, which include __________________, ___________________, _________________, and _________________________.

 

“Love and War in Cyberspace” 380. 5-page outline: In the first 2 pages, analyze the causes of social dysfunction described in the essay. Then in about 3 pages, use research to show how the apartment complex is a microcosm for an emerging social dysfunction in our Age of Information. As such the thesis would like this: The apartment complex is a microcosm for an emerging social dysfunction emerging in our Information Age, which consists of __________________, ___________________, ___________________, and _______________________. You would flesh out the mapping components for the essay's last 3 pages.

 

 

More Stylized Thesis with a More Distinct Writing Voice:

Take a bunch of socially dysfunctional computer nerds in desperate search of belonging, stick them in a yuppie techno-apartment flexing its steroidal broadband muscles and you’ve got Walden, a microcosm of the types of addictions Americans will face in the near future. These addictions will include a sick attachment to trumped-up, often noxious alter egos, the need to vent without boundaries, the preference of virtual worlds to the real world and all the chemicals the body requires to stay up in a ghoul-like existence where sleep is little more than an afterthought.

Research Links:

Virtual Reality: Danger Ahead

Real Hope in a Virtual World (unrealistic expectations)

Geeking Out (addiction)

Second Skin Documentary

CNN (addiction)

1A Lesson Plan for “The Consequences—Undoing Sanity” (299)

Part One. Lexicon

1. Anhedonia: you reach a state of unhappiness from which there is no return. Once you wear this quality on your sleeve, you become unemployable.
2. What’s harder on a man, begging for love or work? Work. Humiliation results in anhedonia.
3. Inertia (see 300 top); paralysis that feeds on itself.
4. Male vs. female hardwiring and their different effects in the workplace: Women are more adaptable, take more risks, and seek change. In contrast, men like routine, comfort, and stability. In sum, women fare better than men in the face of unemployment for 5 reasons: 1. Men's macho pride and identity are inextricably linked to their jobs. 2. Women are more resilient. They bounce back after a crisis. 3. Women are more social than men. Women cooperate. Men on the other hand negotiate. 4. Women take care of themselves during their unemployment. Men on the other hand become shut-ins, withdraw in their homes, and transform into disheveled homeless people. 5. Women thrive on change; men thrive on stagnation and fixed routine.
5. Unemployment is referred to as the “acuteness of the blow”: See page 301 in which the person is so traumatized he cannot face the anxieties, the rejection, and the sense of insignificance all over again, so he sabotages future prospects.
6. The double hit of unemployment: The feeling of being worthless coupled with self-blame: See page 301, last paragraph.
7. “Finessing layoffs”: See page 302 top. The attempt to “finesse” a layoff is futile.
8. The layoff is followed by a breaking of emotional bonds with others; it has a rippling effect. The person withdraws into depression. See page 302.
9. Despondence and apathy set in.
10. Ennui (the cycle: despondence, apathy and inertia, ennui, and then anhedonia)
11. Husband’s unemployment devastates the wife: She has to carry her soul, and his, up the mountain.
12. “Going postal”
13. Unemployment spreads shame through the entire family: See page 307 bottom.
14. Shell-shocked: You become so traumatized that you build a defensive wall that is worse than the problem that made you shell-shocked in the first place. (describe the student with the scowl on her face)  

 

Part Two: Summary of Unemployment Effects

1. family withdraws from one another

2. children are "emotional sponges" and internalize and absorb their parents' emotional trauma.

3. alcoholism increases

4. divorce increases

5. suicide (murder-suicide in Wilmington)

6. long-term stigma

7. long-term low self-esteem and self-blame

8. long-term physical ailments including hypertension, ulcers, chronic fatigue, etc.

9. women reach out for social support more than men so women tend to fare better.

10. Vicious cycle of unemployment: You become depressed, which makes you less employable, which makes you more depressed, and so on and so on. 

Part Three: Writing Options

Option #A:

Write a comparison and contrast essay that explores the similarities and differences between the way men and women handle unemployment. Your first two pages should explore the similarities; the second half should examine the discrepancies.

 

Option #B:

Write an informative essay on the psychological damage and family trauma resulting from unemployment.  

Option #C:

Using no fewer than 3 research sources, write a survival manual for someone who lost his or her job. Evaluate five things that the person must do to avoid some of the traps discussed earlier. 

Research Sources:

Predicting Self-Esteem During Unemployment

Supporting Your Spouse Through Unemployment

Unemployment Blues

How Pink Slips Hurt More Than Workers

Wolf at the Door