Great Works I: Remixing Memory

The film adaption of Othello from 1995 includes many memory flashbacks. These flashbacks illustrates a different point of view that isn’t shown in the book. These flashbacks show the love that Othello and Desdemona had for each other since the first time they laid eyes on each other. Another thing that is showed by these flashbacks is how intrigued Desdemona was by the experiences and problems that Othello had gone through. The meaning behind his speech is clearly tied together due to his flashbacks. The small additions of these flashbacks help the people watching figure out the scene much better, the movie cut down some lines throughout the text but the plot was still quite similar to the book.

Scene 2 act 3
In the passage I analyzed Othello was telling the Duke and Brabantio that he had not used any type of trickery, magic, or spells to make Desdemona fall in love with him. They had spent plenty of time together and with all that time spent there were many stories told to her which slowly helped develop love for him. This passage shows a lot about Othellos character and shows the type of person he is. A lot of things put Othello down as a character, as a “moor” Othello is put down due to his former religion (islam), his race, and last but not least skin color. Othello is then converted to Christianity and and becomes a respected soldier located in Venice. One man who respects Othello greatly immediately blames Othello for drugging/tricking Desdemona to marry him. Othello has great respect for Brabantio and real true love for Desdemona. Their love for each other truly came from spending quality time with each other and was not influenced by drugs and or trickery.

This piece of Islamic art isn’t just ceramic tile, but is part of history dating back to  A.H. 722/ A.D. 1322–23. This piece is from Iran during  1206 to 1353 otherwise known as “the Ilkhanid period”. When a piece of art comes to a point facing towards a direction some people might think/wonder as to what its pointing to. I had the same thought but eventually found out that this piece is facing the Holy Mecca. Every Muslim that prays has to face in this direction which makes this piece very important and special. As you see this piece of art is made from various colors such as blue, light green, and white. These colors are very soothing and tend to be relaxing to look at while praying.

I agree with dh141373’s post. In many Islamic art pieces especially any pieces from Iran you will most likely only see patterns and inscriptions in a religious setting. One connection I can make is that most of the pieces of art had something to do with god, it was either had a connection to god in some way or says something about god which shows the importance of religion in all these pieces. Many mosques in Iran/Iraq are covered in this ceramic tile with various beautiful patterns/Arabic sayings. Another I can make a connection to this piece above because I’ve been to Iraq and Syria multiple times and have been in some of the most beautiful mosques in the world.

1. I will be focusing my post on the first few pages of chapter number ten. Page 230 where Odysseus asked his host Aeolus who he’d been with for a month for a chance to be on his way back. After they had talked about sailing home Aeolus didn’t deny him anything and provided him with a sack of wind.

2. Is is Odysseus’ fault? Are the gods against him and his ways?  Can you relate to this event?

3. Odysseus is given a chance to get back to his own land and decides to take a rest after the long nine days of journey. He was given this sack of winds with responsibility but he took on all the work on his own hands. He had been working on the vessel’s sheet himself without any help and didn’t trust one mate on the ship. In my opinion that was a good idea on his side but didn’t think of the consequences. Maybe if Odysseus had some help he wouldn’t of needed some rest and would’ve  easily gotten home safely or maybe he thought otherwise. It could have been Odysseus’ fault cause he hadn’t told the crew as to exactly what was inside the sack which is why the nosy mates had opened the sack in the first place. On page 232 King Aeolus says “Back again, Odysseus–why? Some blustering god attacked you?” This line may show that the gods are against Odysseus in some way. The god of the winds may have helped him but another god could have easily had different intentions. This event could easily be related to many people. The god of winds had given Odysseus the power to go back home with good intention but maybe other gods had a different intention. This story could be used in real life to show that good intentions don’t always end up in good situations!

I’m unsure as to why Athena even cares for Odysseus and everything that is going on. Athena’s intentions seem to be very unclear at this point in time and its confusing. Zeus did show that he is slightly concerned about Odysseus and his situation but Athena is mainly the only god that’s really putting in effort into trying to find Odysseus and bring him back. Why is that? Does Athena think she’s going to be rewarded? I wonder this cause why would she put so much effort into someone that doesn’t mean much to them. I’m not so sure as to what Athena is up to but it doesn’t seem right because she is going against the words of Poseidon. Poseidon wished for Odysseus to never return back home yet Athena is trying to get Odysseus back.

In this passage there is a line that gets me quite confused. Line 275 “the great Odysseus, long deprived, so ravenous now-“. Why is he referred to as the great Odysseus? People are worshiping Odysseus for no reason, there isn’t much reason to refer Odysseus as the “great”. There is a lot going on in this book and its getting quite confusing!    

In my opinion Socrates is totally wrong. In Phaedrus, Socrates tells a story about a famous old god named Theuth. He was the inventor of many arts but his greatest was the use of letters which he shared with another god named Thamus. Now the two gods did not agree with each other as their points of view were different. Thamus thought that writing would not help one learn a certain subject or even increase their memory. But Theuth thought the complete opposite, he believes that writing will make learning easier as well as improve ones memory. I can relate to Thamus’ idea as without writing down anything I would not be able to remember any of the information given to me. Without writing down how would we learn about the past, we wouldn’t know much information/history at all. Without writing none of these stories would exist today,  and I doubt we would even be in this class or even have to read this.

In the article “The Oral World vs. The Written Word” written by Nicholas Carr, we see that Plato kind of contradicts himself. Plato had written Phaedrus but he also believes that writing isn’t always the right way to go and can sometimes hold you back from learning. Imagine the world without writing, all the events that have happened in the past would not be brought down to us. The world would not be the same as it is today, nothing that people have learned would be open to us today and the world would be in different. In this article we see that Carr clearly points out the issues that oral education has and as I said in the paragraph above that we would not be reading about the ideas of Plato or Socrates without writing.

The internet is in fact making individuals extremely lazy and contributing to a weaker memory. The reason as to why I believe this is because if we don’t remember something that we’ve learned in the past we can always refer to Google. In the olden days if you didn’t remember something you learned/read about you would have to get the book that you read it from and read it once again. In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, we see that Carr clearly clearly shows us as to how we process information and  how it has changed because of the internet. Instead of reading to find out an answer we tend to just refer to Google. This is the reason as to why I agree with Carr because the internet is making us lazy but people don’t realize it cause everyone’s doing it. There is no effort being put into a project, no one needs to use their brain anymore because Google is there. Since there is so much information on the web why would one rent out a book? Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed that I’m unable to comprehend to many things I read especially books. I can comprehend much better if an article or passage is online rather that in a book. Even though the passage is online I still have a hard time understanding what is being said and often have to re-read it. This shows that the web is dulling our minds in a certain aspects but then again without the web or internet many technologies today would not be available to us.

– Mohammed H. Jacksi