In this blog I didn't make any direct references to other sources other than We, but as I was writing I did think about and get ideas from other sources such as The Grand Inquisitor. When I was thinking about how Harrison says human's need something to believe in and always need proof, I related it to when the God was tempted to give His people a miracle in order to prove that He was actually God and was capable. God wanted His people to believe in Him without needing proof, but because of our human nature is naturally curious God's people didn't believe him. Harrison talks about Vico's Giants in the same way, the people in the forests were at first oblivious but then saw lightening and questioned it and needed to find answers. In the same way God's people needed answers from God, but he wasn't willing to give them to the people.
Monique has valid ideas in which she explains how people will eventually feel inhuman if they are treated that way, which is how Shin from a prison camp in North Korea felt. However, I believe that because these people in the prison camps haven't ever been treated any better, nor have they seen people being treated better, they can't know they are not being treated as humans. Shin says that he never thought that being in the prison camp was unfair, he never knew a world that wasn't the prison camp. Therefore he would not be able to make a differentiation between humane and inhumane, because when we use these terms they are associated with our way of life in the outside world, rather than his world inside the camps.
Discussion:
Saumya raises a point that was brought up in one of her blogs about the North Korean Gulag, saying that the transition between elementary school to high school can be compared to the transition of moving from a prison camp to escaping and being free. I completely see where she, and Anuraag (who posted on her blog first bringing up this idea) are coming from, but to me the transition seems a lot more hard. Yes we go from a fairly ignorant stage to a less ignorant stage, but do we ever really come leave the oblivion as long as we're in school? Transitioning from elementary school to high school takes 12 years, an extremely slow process, in which every year we prepare for the next, this however does not happen in prison camps. If we use the analogy of prison camp being equivalent to 1st Grade then, we would have to say that Shin was in "1st Grade" for 20+ years, when he escaped and was immediately put into "12th Grade".
Xenoblogging:
Comment Primo:
I was the first to comment on this Tom's blog on Questions of Conquest and the Illusion of Individuality. This was my first comment in general, and it was more of a critical comment rather than a comment discussing the topic of the blog. I thought that Tom's blog could have used more analysis and connections to We.
Comment Grande:
My first comment on this blog discussing how I thought that Winston and Shin were different from each other because Winston was never ignorant towards the Party, whereas Shin was in complete oblivion to the world outside of the prison camp. Winston had always chose to go against the Party, and Shin never thought the camp was unfair to him. These differences if related to 1984, would make Shin any other Party member, who was influenced by someone to go against, or leave the Party, whereas Winston made the choice himself, by realizing that the Party treated people wrong.
In my second comment on this blog I agreed with Pooja's comparison with D-503 and Shin, explaining how they both were never against their oppressors, in fact they both wished that they could go back to being oppressed and oblivious at one point or another. I contrasted this to Winston who always wanted to revolt against his oppressor and was forced to give in to the Party's ways in the end.
Wild Card:
I really liked blogging about this because the topic of the blog was slightly shocking. After reading about totalitarianism and oppression using ignorance, it was interesting and unfortunate to see that this actually happens in the world. There were so many connections between Shin's life and the life of D-503 and Winston making it really fun to compare and contrast each of them, not just in my blog, but also in the comments of other blogs.
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