Author Archives: Amir Hanif Uddin

Blog Post #6

After finishing Benito Cereno, I stopped for a minute to marvel at what a masterpiece Herman Melville had written. Melville’s depiction of the practice of slavery is a scene that I had never thought about or heard about before. Most of my knowledge of slavery is in reference to American Slavery, a few generations into the start, so I never really knew too much about the journey or the experiences of slaves who were brought straight from their homelands. Not to be offensive, but it is a common belief that after a few generations of slavery, many slaves were uneducated as a result of the oppression that they faced. I truly believe that Melville’s depiction of slavery was positive. Something that is easy to forget is that as silly as someone may sound speaking a language that isn’t there native or first language, you cannot determine how smart someone is in their native tongue. I never would have thought that Babo was the mastermind behind the entire revolt, ordering all the other slaves and puppeteering Don Benito in Captain Delano’s presence. Melville shows another side of slavery that I had never before thought about and despite the brutality and the malice that the Blacks aboard the San Dominick showed towards the crew members and passengers, I sympathized with the Blacks more so than I did the crew members of the ship, with the exception of Don Benito. Finally, I do not think Captain Delano can be blamed for his blindness. I do not think the vast majority of people are perceptive enough to have picked up on what was actually going on, especially as Captain Delano was not only an experienced sea captain, but an incredibly observant one as well. I doubt that in his place, any of us would have been able to piece together what was going on, especially with Babo’s masterful puppeteering and Don Benito’s compliance.

Blog Post #5

Recently, I began to write a little realistic fiction. As it was my first attempt it wasn’t very good. There were many details that I failed to include. However, as I was the author, narrator, and protagonist, it has made it incredibly easy to identify the different variations in presentation. That aside, as the story is a Romance, the plot regards, the life of an adolescent male before he is married, his attempt and success to court a female, their marriage, and life after marriage, where the protagonist describes his life after marriage and compares it to the notions of what he thought marriage would be like when he was younger. However, the discourse does not do a good job showing this to other readers, as this story was written by myself, for myself. The discourse could only explain this plot to the other characters in the story, or if this plot was to be acted out in real life.

Secondly, Culler explains in the “What stories do” section, that narrative is used to :

  1. Give us pleasure, by allowing us to enjoy realistic events with twists that we don’t expect, as well as allowing us to imagine and write down our deepest desires in these events.
  2. Teach about the world, by allowing us to understand the ideas and perspectives of others through their own minds. Be it from the perspective of someone older, younger, opposite gender, poorer, richer, or someone from a different era. It has the ability to show you the differences between those like you and those with whom you share nothing in common.
  3. Police, by not only taking our desires and shaping them by reality, but instilling ideas of their own, that are seen as  acceptable or believable.
  4. Provide a mode of social criticism, by turning the failures, the horrors and the unknowns of reality into inviting tales to allow the readers to see and understand why the situations are intolerable.

Blog Post #4

As Culler describes the relationship between poetics and rhetoric as “allies” it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that many poems happen to use a lot of rhetorical figures. In regards to the two poems we read, it is easy to find metaphor, as they tend to be quite common in literature, and most of us have been aware of their existence since we were in grade school. As I wrote in my annotation for Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the wreck”, the metaphor that I pulled out was when Rich stated “the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth”. As I have already written in my annotation, I believe that the distinction that Rich makes between the wreck and its myth is comparable to the distinction between our world, and what we are told about it. We’ve come to explore the wreck to see it for itself, not to see what we’ve been told. Exploring the wreck is compared to experiencing the world we live in. Whereas, the myth is all that we are told about the world. The different experiences that we as individuals, have written down or told others about. In order to truly understand others, just listening doesn’t work for everyone, some of us would understand better if we lived it. Although I am certain there are a few of the other rhetorical figures hidden in Rich’s work, I could not find any as my eye’s feel a bit untrained.

Blog Post #3

The idea that language, regardless of whether it is spoken, written or sung, can convey an entirely separate meaning than the intention of the speaker, author or singer is something that never occurred to me. Culler runs through the ideas that one’s interpretation can be derived from things such as an author’s intentions, context, experience of the reader or the actual body of work (referring to the language used). Regardless, whether or not you (with your experience) are capable of understanding the mind or thoughts of an author (based on context), it may be impossible to tell whether or not the author got their actual intentions out in their work. Despite the fact that it is okay for a reader to have an interpretation that is different to others, it may be impossible to compare what you extrapolate from a text to, what the author wrote the text to represent. Such information is something we are unlikely to find, unless an author has written a memoir or specifically explained what their intentions were and whether they were misconstrued. It is even harder to do such when referring to poems or books, as many of these tend to become popular after the death of an author, or at least much further along in their career. However, it is reassuring to know that great writers of the past may have never understood the power or the effect that their ideas could have on so many others. The “oracle” isn’t truly all knowing.

Blog Post #2

After continuing to read Culler’s  “What is Literature and Does it Matter?”, his explanation of Literature as Fiction really stuck with me. In my mind this angle of literature is the and easiest to see and explain. Culler explains that “the relation of what speakers say to what authors think is always a matter of interpretation”. Despite the fact that an author may have a specific scenario in mind, the fact that the words used to describe said scenario may be vague can cause the reader to modify what the scenario is. For example, Culler references, giving your friend specific directions (meet me at this café, at this time tomorrow for dinner) as opposed to the simplicity of “Inviting a Friend to Supper”, the title of a poem written by Ben Jonson. The first statement, allows the reader to understand specific “spatial and temporal referents”, whereas the title that Jonson chose gives some ambiguity and control to the readers imagination. There are many works of fiction that contain many references to our world, as many things can only be explained analogously. Despite that, not everyone may interpret the same words the same way, not because of ambiguity, but because of their understanding of the world. People  of different cultures/heritages, genders, social classes or raised in different eras can read the same text and not have the same understanding. As well as the aspect of reading something during different stages in your life. A book you are forced to read in college as an adolescent may become much more meaningful or powerful if you choose to read it again at a different point in time. All of this is encompassed as the angle of literature as fiction.

Blog Post #1

  1. Personally, I believe that the most important aspect that Culler points out is that there is not one way to define literature. He makes this clear when he states that “We are dealing with two different perspectives that overlap, intersect, but don’t seem to yield a synthesis” when referring to how literature is not a frame put around a specific type of language, nor is literature a specific type of language used to catch someone’s attention. Just because something is well written does not make it a piece of literature nor does something have to  be incredibly eye catching to be considered literature. Culler believes that multiple points/perspectives are needed to consider something a piece of literature. However, just because these points are present in something, it isn’t automatically considered literature. This belief supports one of Culler’s earlier claims that “What sets off literary works from other narrative display texts is that they have undergone a process of selection: they have been published, reviewed and reprinted, so that readers approach them with the assurance that others have found them well constructed and ‘worth it'”. As someone who has never been very confident in their own writing ability, something that I pull from Culler’s text is that, just because your method of writing or expressing yourself does not fit into the standard that you consider “literature” does not stop others from potentially appreciating your work.
  2. A question that stuck with me as I read this chapter was “By whose standards would one be considered fit to deem a ,text/passage/body of work, a piece of literature?”. As Culler explained that a reader can understand how to approach a text based on the fact that it has been published or reviewed by others that tells them that it is considered well constructed or worth it. What is it that qualifies someone else’s opinion of literature to be trust worthy?

Introduction

 

Hello everyone, my name is Amir Hanif Uddin. I usually just go by Hanif. I am a transfer student to LaGuardia, making me a freshman again. I spent a few semesters in Hunter College, and made a lot of mistakes during the beginning of my college career. I ended up leaving Hunter College instead of staying and trying to fix my mistakes as it just didn’t feel right to me. I am happy to restart my college career with a much better understanding of how college is in comparison to everything that comes before it.