Utopia and Station Eleven Chapter Seven to Eighteen Overview

 

Question 1

Hayat (life)

This place promotes peace in the community and fairness. There is no unjust and I would encourage everyone to respect one another if they have a problem, they can come to me, and we will deal with it. The justice system will not favor any unjust acts and will not be controlled by money. Everyone can do what they wish, so long as they do not contribute any sort of violence and hate. Gossiping will always be there but if it gets out of hand, the person who started it and all the people who participated in it will be punished. The community will be living in a highland with no technology and with our farm animals, next to a river. People can ride horses, and go out and explore, so long they remain respectful of each other. We all will support each other as family and if more people would love to join, they are welcome, so long they would abide by the rules. Everyone helps each other from building houses to catching fish to taking care of the animals. A place free from all internet and technology.

Question 2

Two quotes:

Section 2: Page 50 (Chapter10)

“An older woman sat in a chair by the doorway, knitting. Kirsten recognized the local midwife.”

Kirsten was looking for her friends Charlie, Jeremy, and their baby girl Annabel. She finds that a stranger lives in their house and no trace of them. She then sees Maria, a local midwife who tells her what happened to Charlie, Jeremy, and Annabel. Maria warns Kirsten and the Symphony to leave town immediately and that St. Deborah is not the same as before.

Section 3: Page 91 (Chapter 15)

“and Miranda is finding it increasingly difficult to hide her unease. Why would a three-year wedding anniversary celebration involve anyone other than the two people who are actually married to one another?”

Arthur invited many people whom Miranda didn’t know for their anniversary, including a woman called Elizabeth who kept flirting back and forth with Elizabeth, ignoring his wife, who is forced to sit with strangers she does not recognize, and later divorces Miranda for Elizabeth.

Question 3

·       I think “Survival is Insufficient” fits their Traveling Troupe in many ways. One way would be that even after twenty years, they are one of the few pursuing their passion. While everyone is more focused on surviving, the Traveling Troupe follows their passion for art. They show their audience that one can still dream and do what one wants to. Both people in Midsummer’s Night Dream and Station Eleven have suffered and gone through a lot. They both faced a plague and had to adjust their lives and many people died. The other parallel of this play would be how Kirsten and Sayid perform a scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream about former lovers and how they too are former lovers.

Question 4

v Life has been hard for Kirsten. After the pandemic, Kirsten joined a group called The Travelling Troupe. This group had a lot of people who were passionate about art and helped her pursue her passion for Shakespeare’s plays, especially the most memorable play for her which was Midsummer Night’s Dream. This became a relief for her compared to the tough life around her and an escape from reality.

Question 5

v The prophet is a young man who founded a violent, paranoid, and conspiracy-filled cult in St. Deborah. He swept into the city like a storm, and together with his followers, he further devastated the urban areas. He established a cult that forces members to adhere to its ideals and compels members to give up their loved ones in order to survive the harshness of the new world. He obtained several wives in this way, and with a mentality that was corrupted, instilled fear of the new world after the pandemic in people, which led to the growth of additional corruption.

Question 6

v We learn that he is from a small island called Delano based in Canada. He met a good friend of his Clark while attending Toronto University and there, he found his passion for acting and it only grew. He gradually became famous for playing small roles in Hollywood. He was then introduced to Miranda by his mother, a girl from his small town. He thought she was too young at that time and after a few years called her to ask her for lunch. He took her out of her toxic relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Pablo. On his third anniversary with Miranda, Arthur flirted with a girl name Elizabeth during the party and later divorced Miranda and married Elizabeth. Elizabeth gave birth to his son, and he later marries Lydia, who became his third wife. His whole character surrounds the fact that he is a famous artist and because of fame, he knows no other and forgets his friends like Clark and family like Miranda. He later regrets everything, preparing to leave his fame to move to Israel to be closer to his son but in the end, passes away because of a heart attack.

Station Eleven Chapter Three to Six Overview

 “No more internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken….” (Mandel 32).

• Chapter 6 describes how the world was before and a list of things that they are losing little by little like trains, social media, telephones, and air travel. It highlights how this is the end of ordinary and normal life (like walking down the near park and hearing children’s laughter ) and that this is the start of a tragedy that they do not know how to overcome yet.

 

“The night doorman turned a newspaper page. If it had been anyone other than Hua, Jeevan wouldn’t have believed it, but he has never known a man with a greater gift for understatement. If Hua said there was an epidemic, then epidemic wasn’t a strong enough word” (Mandel 20).

• It is about how the virus, Georgia Flu spread so fast at an unbelievable rate, killing people on a massive scale, and how Jeevan is advised by his old-time friend Hua who is a doctor, to stock up and stay inside. Jeevan acts quickly but at the end of the last call with Hua, he gets an alert to leave the country because it is pretty bad and Jeevan hears him cough at the end of the call, this showing that he also is affected by the virus.

In what ways was your life also impacted by the Covid pandemic? 

• I would say the fact that being forced to stay at home with the whole family is a big impact. This caused a few arguments here and there and enabled me to start baking because everyone was trying to find new ways to entertain themselves.

Chapter Six lists all the things that went away following the devastation of the Georgian flu. Had this pandemic been as bad as the Georgian Flu described in the novel, what do you think you would have missed most from your old life, material or not? (Think of things both large and small, from massive rock concerts to small things like toothpaste.) What are some things that might help people still find hope and reasons to keep on going beyond just mere survival? How might people come together?

 

• Social Media, cell phone lines, airplanes, playing around outside, going outside, mobile transports like cars and trains, etc. I think the best thing for people to do is adjust their lives in accordance with what is happening. An example of that would be covid-19 and how we adjusted our way of living with the whole family and looking for ways to entertain each other like playing board games and talking to families through the internet. Being able to work from home was also a big change that occurred.

 

• We learn that Arthur is a profound actor and a good person and that he died doing what he loved the most. The passage shows that this will be the beginning of a new era where one cannot use phones to communicate with the other person and no one would be willing to come out of the apartments and houses. We also learn that this is a deadly virus, wiping out people within a few hours.

Station Eleven- Overview

 

1.    The major premise of dystopian films is typically a catastrophic event (usually an environmental calamity). Losing control when attempting to locate yourself in the midst of the calamity is experienced. Everyone is often trying to survive.

2.    For it to be dramatic and to capture the audience’s attention. This leaves an uneasy feeling in one’s heart, making them curious and wanting to know more about the story and the situation itself. Jeevan Chaudhary and Kirsten seem to be the characters that matter the most. From this seen, I would make a wild guess saying that Jeevan is going to be one of the sole survivors of this tragic disaster. Kirsten is a little girl that was part of the play and Tanya is the one taking care of her while her parents come to fetch her. Walter is a cardiologist, and it seems that it was his good friend, Arthur, that is now dead. Laura seems to be his girlfriend of Jeevan, judging from the way she disappeared while he was trying to save someone and not picking up the call, that this relationship is not stable, and they might call it quits soon.

In the second chapter, I want to know how the bartender survives the longest and why it is three weeks. What tragedy came upon them for this to be their reality and now, it seems like they are enjoying their last day on earth instead of it being a “get together- remembering Arthur”.

3.    “……she abandoned him there, she’d left him onstage performing CPR on a dead actor and gone home, and now wanted him to buy milk.”

This really shows the depth of their relationship and that even though they live together, she does not care about him at all. I think towards the end of chapter 1, he realizes that this is his reality and wants to go to a bar but decides against it and heads to a park because he just wants to be alone.

DYSTOPIA

 

1.    Many people like the sense of justice and there is no need for justice if the world is at peace. That is why, if a story has a good sense of suspense and people who are wronged trying to find justice in an unfamiliar world, it is seen as an adventure, and many are entertained by it. A great example would be The Maze Runner. I read The Hobbit and I watched movies that were developed from books like Lord of the Rings.

2.    They find it captivating and the fact that some historic figures get put together in the present. Dystopia novels are relatable to teenagers, thus making them scary. With dystopian novels, they find most of what they are looking for in terms of emotional availability and both the sad reality and justice towards that feeling, teaching teenagers about “moral and ethical grey areas.”

3.    “er hum….” I can tell that this might have suspense and a heart-aching sort of story. This book fits into dystopia perfectly because it has the ‘unjust world’ and ordinary day-to-day people trying to find their way as well as save humanity. There is suspense and from the looks of it, it has a ‘realistic ending’- where there would be the death of the main character or someone close to the main character, eventually making the book even better than before.

On the Nature of Persuasion

 

Discussion Board Three:

1.     What are some of your initial ideas about homeschooling before you read? What do you think is the ultimate purpose of education?

The education of children at home is known as homeschooling. Parents typically carry this out. I myself have heard a lot of positive things about homeschooling, and when I was younger, my mother taught me the basics at home. Therefore, I agree that homeschooling is beneficial.

2.     Describe some of Megan’s experiences as a homeschooled student in what her mom terms “delight-directed integrated study.”

Her mother taught her a variety of subjects, including history, music, and health. Her mother gave her practical instruction and afterward tested her knowledge of the material by asking her a number of questions. Books would be mailed to their home, and their mother would mention a few things from them but never go into great detail. Homeschooling's drawback is that it is only as good as our parents and what they deem to be "right" for us. In Megan's situation, her mother refused to discuss subjects like algebra that she didn't find interesting. When she brought a dead turtle for them to "inspect and dissect" for science class, her mother tried to make up for the oversight.

3.     How does O’Gieblyn trace the foundations of homeschooling to the Enlightenment era?

 

She makes a comparison to their freedom. In contrast to youngsters who are taught in school to follow directions and become employees, they have time to be independent in their views and choose what they want to do with their lives. These youngsters frequently lack mental independence. Children at school are typically confined and guided through a system that aims to limit their thoughts and forces them to be dependent on a company or their place of employment, compared to Megan. But she also explains that the Enlightenment era has a downside, which is this is dependent on the parents, if the parents decide to abandon their child without teaching the basics fully, he/she might not be able to get used to society or when they get out of their house because of the unfamiliarity and the lack of education that they have received.

 

 

 

4.     Later in the essay, she discusses the case of the Austin Package Bomber, Mark Conditt, who was homeschooled. The media seized on this to portray his isolation. Does O’Gieblyn feel media portray homeschooling fairly in this passage?

 

She does not believe that it was depicted fairly, though. Most people have a false idea about homeschooling because of fear. She argues that while it might have played a role in his motivation to commit murder, such as estrangement, it was not the only factor. She describes how it is upsetting that the school was referred on Twitter to a neo-Nazi gang. This also explains why her mother "ascribed to the World" and how they assume stupid things about homeschooling, like those who are homeschooled are imprisoned in their homes with no freedom while others who are psychologically jailed for their absurd thoughts are free to think whatever they want.

5.     Contrast her experience as a homeschooled student to what happens when she enrolls in a public school?

When she was homeschooled, she learned what she was interested in and had the freedom to pursue it. She was free to do what she wanted throughout the day, which was mostly reading a book or exploring the forest. She lived in solitude and was free-minded compared to when she went to public school. She had to do subjects that did not resonate with her, which made it really difficult for her to adjust because she was not interested in them. There was a time she got in trouble doing homework for another class other than the class she was in. She found it crazy that you have to sit around and learn something you are not interested in. The vast difference she felt made her become self-conscious and made her lonely. She found herself trying to adjust to the laughter, and crazy conversation of her school friends, which tired her out. She found herself becoming lonelier as the days went by.

6.     Why do you think O’Gieblyn choose to finish with a critique of the bestselling memoir, Educated? Did you agree or disagree?

She wanted us to take not how society portrays one thing as being horrible and horrid to one’s life and that one needs someone else to think for them. Even though Westover had some difficulties growing up, she never blamed her parents which made society point fingers at her, trying to find fault for her deciding to do that and saying that she does not know her own mind and that she was in a bad situation, not realizing that it might be them who do not have control of their own mind and that they are not free. My favorite line is “We are all like

Frankenstein’s monster, victims of our own miseducations,

a motley patchwork of the influences that have shaped us,

sometimes without our awareness or consent.”