Reflect and Connect: Week 3

Connect:

 In Shakespeare in the Bush, I made the connection of misinterpretation. This is because the author thinks that the overall message of Hamlet would be understood world wide with slight variations through translation but the message itself wouldn't actually change. An example of misinterpretation I can think of is when one uses equivocal language, or ambiguous language. For example, "I got a buck last night!" Are we talking about a dollar bill or the animal? Did you win money or shoot a deer? The message all depends on how you interpret the meaning.

Reflect:
I thought it was interesting reading Shakespeare in the Bush because before I read the story, I had the same opinion as the author. Hamlet is a commonly known story that you would assume everybody understood in the same way. However, with the Tiv tribe being an illiterate tribe, they can't read or write. They have never heard the story before until the author told it to them. This left them to dissect the story in a way that matched their customs and beliefs. For example, when the author talks about the ghost appearing, they don't believe in such a thing and claim it to be a sign of witch craft. I also enjoyed learning that the tribe starts drinking beer early in the morning. When I read that in the story, I didn't think of them as drunks, in fact I didn't even find it weird. I assumed it was a tribe custom and didn't question it. As we talked about it in class, I think people opened their eyes when the point was brought up that they don't have clean drinking water so they make beer and that is what they drink. What I liked most about reading Shakespeare in the Bush is that by the end of the story, the author changes her opinion about the interpretation of Hamlet. Obviously these people in the tribe turned the story into something that the author had never thought about before and I liked seeing the change in her thinking.

Questions 2,3,5 page 75:

#2. I think that when I hear the news on the radio I understand it better because they are less formal about the news than they are on the TV and they make it simpler and condense it down more. I also think that radio is more objective they aren't neutral about the news like the people on TV have to be. They have their own opinions about the story and they are happy to share them.
#3. Some things I use everyday are shampoo, conditioner, soap, make up, clothes, contacts, pencils, paper, toothpaste, and sheets. Every item I use on a daily basis has been advertised at some point or another. I think our world is over run with advertising. In my health class we learned a statistic that said by the time a child is twenty, they will have been exposed to one million advertisements in their life. That is a lot of advertising.
#5. I think it is still possible to be a Renaissance Man. There is a lot of information in the world but it is still possible to get a little bit of knowledge from each subject. Even knowledge of the past is important. It is important to know what has happened so that you are aware of certain events and so that hopefully you will know how to prevent them in the future. It's like learning from mistakes. You can't learn from something that hasn't happened yet. Honestly, I think that schools don't need to "prepare" us for the amount of knowledge we are going to learn. A lot of the stuff we learn happens outside of school anyways.  I think schools should go on teaching how they are now and it will be fine. I do think though that schools shouldn't waste so much time on things that don't matter. Like assignments we do just to say that we've done something but that we actually don't learn from. Schools should focus on the basics of what we need to learn and then send us on our way. Humanities knowledge helps us understand people better and it helps us become better critical thinkers in the long run. By taking humanities, we are learning how to dissect a thought and respond in a critical manner.