The ideas we have discussed I feel all relate to consumerism and the media. I can see how the media is affecting our daily lives and how it is not always good for us. I think this class has really made me think about what I do in a given day and how people other than myself are affecting those things. Nothing really angered me in the discussions or in the class; however I feel that the video that asked teens questions relating to the Mark Bauerlien article was a little insulting because I feel it was controversial. I also feel that they asked a lot of questions that I knew and it was too generalized. I feel out of all the novels Feed was the most difficult to get through, but it put a lot of things in perspective and I realized that the government could do that in our society and it kind of scared me. I really enjoyed taking the Thoreau challenge and I learned that technology plays a bigger role in my life than I realized.
I realized through this class that a lot of the things in the world around us have more substance than we realize the media, technology, consumerism and even literature itself plays a part in our life that most of us don't even realize.
I have never been a person that liked to read, however I recently found myself ordering Mocking Jay and Catching Fire. I really look forward to reading them over Christmas break. I discovered that maybe I should look into more types of books within that genre because I really liked the book Hunger Games a lot. I also realize through this class that not every person interprets literature in the same way and one piece can contain several different meanings. I also realized that a lot of the quotes that I was writing down for the discussions were the same as some of the people within my group, which means I am not alone in my opinions and in the way I think about literature, which makes me feel more comfortable about sharing my opinions.
I also found it interesting that there were several different takes within the class on the same piece of literature. I think having parallel opinions within our group really allowed us to discuss more freely as well, not to say that differing opinions did not sometimes make it interesting.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Feed was the hardest book to get through, but I started to feel by the end of the novel that he wanted it to be annoying. He wanted you to be repulsed by the way the language had progressed and how dull the interactions between people were.
ReplyDeleteI also think that this class gave me more concrete examples for what I had begun to learn previously about consumerism in the media.
I think that my favorite part about the class was how our group and the entire class had so many different opinions or feelings towards the material. I used to be really reserved with stating my opinions but I also feel much more comfortable doing so now.
ReplyDeleteWow you thought it was harder to get into Feed? It was 1984 for me, just couldn't get into it. Anyway after reading Feed and seeing how much control their government had over them had me scared because it made me wonder just how much control our government has over us. I agree that the media does have an affect on our daily lives and sometimes we don't even realize it. Sometimes in a positive way and sometimes in a negative way.
ReplyDelete