Of course there is a difference between these speakers, David Foster Wallace is a primary source for this information and theory that there could be another reason for anything and everything if you just take the time to think about it. Toni Morrison is telling a story of an elderly woman that stops and thinks to help her realize that there are multiple possibilities for one predicament, this differentiates Toni from David because Toni is just telling a story about this, and we are not exactly sure if she has this same thought process as the elderly woman or David for that matter. She is merely telling a folklore story and as much as you would like to believe she thinks that way, stop and think, there is always room for doubt.
Monday, August 25, 2014
Compare and contrast: explain how these two speeches are similar. Explain how they are different.
These two speakers share a very common thinking pattern, although Toni Morrison is speaking in terms of a old folklore tale she speaks as if she holds that to be a story of her life. As if she was the old blind lady, and as if she thinks the same thoughts of that elderly lady. On the other hand, David Foster Wallace speaks of his first hand encounters with his thoughts. Regardless, both of these speakers share the fact that there is always multiple ways of observing a situation if you just think before you speak what comes to your mind initially. Instead of the elderly woman Toni speaks of just saying whatever she thinks at first whether it being a dead bird or a live bird, she thinks and comes to the conclusion that neither of the options could be true and there could be no bird at all due to the lack of knowledge prohibited by her lack of sight warranting her response of "I don't know." Likewise, David expresses an everyday trip to the super market after work explaining how you can bear the annoying people lying within by simply stopping and thinking if there could possibly be another reason why these people are acting that certain way. He gives the example of someone cutting him off in traffic on a freeway, and instead of getting angry at that person he stops and thinks that they could possibly have a much more important task to do, that they are center of the universe not him.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I never thought of the Nobel Lecture that way. I like how you said that Toni is putting herself in the place of the old lady, as if it was her. I agree on how both authors do talk about how we do have different ways to view things but how we should try to view as differently. View it as people have bigger problems going on than what we think or that what ever they have going on could be more important than what's going on in our lives.
ReplyDeleteI also like the idea of Toni telling the story as if it was about herself. But I don't think that she is "merely telling a folklore story". I believe that the story was put in place of her speech because she was trying to display the way of her thinking. In my perspective I think that Morrison wanted her audience to understand her thinking that language is a significant tool in our society and it that it changes our daily thoughts and perception. On the other hand, I completely with what you said about David Wallace and that if we observe a situation in multiple ways that there isn't always a negative outlook.
ReplyDeleteJust like you i saw them both in a sense sending the message of think before you speak. You were able to hit the points that were the main highlights i believe, in these speeches you hit on the fact that Toni seemed to be taking on the role of the old lady and how David was using his actual day to day experience to get his points across. You did a way better job at comparing and contrasting the differences than i did and i believe that if we were to think like David it would be an easier environment around the world in our day to day lives because i feel we judge to quickly when we are having a bad day and we never think to step back and think about why things happened the way they did or how others are feeling besides yourself.
ReplyDelete