Monthly Archives: February 2014

journal #1

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In some ways, the world according to the story Caves of Steel are different from the world we live in today. The major differences are the cities, buildings, and methods of transportation. In the novel every city is enclosed under a huge metal dome and they fear to go outside and we live in a open space area with different kind and shape of housing, also with fresh air and sun. For transportation in every city has a complex series of moving sidewalks that people use to navigate their way throughout the city and they also use spaceships to travel from city to city, the world we live in today are kind of similar to what Asimov described but we have cars, trains, buses, boats and airplanes but not spaceships. Nowadays as technology is improving and we are the one who discovered and control over technology and gets the benefits from it which make our life easier but in the story those “earthmen” are fear of those robot/machines that one day they will replace their place in life and work or to take over their space.

Class Notes – 2/6/14

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OpenLab introduction

Open Lab Help Documents

 Ways of analyzing a literary text

FORMAL ISSUES

Characters

  • relationships they have with other characters
  • character development

Genre

  • what genre(s) is the text part of
  • what generic conventions does the text employ or disrupt?

Language of the Text

  • Figurative language of the text – beyond the actual meaning — symbolic language

Plot

Theme / Motif – a reoccurring set of issues/ideas in the text

 

TEXTUAL/AUTHOR HISTORIES

Textual History

versions of the text

manuscripts/drafts

editors

censorship

altered for mass-market appeal

translations

 

Author

  • authorial intention — how do we know the author’s intention? should the author’s intention be privileged over other possible interpretations? —-> multiplicity of meaning. —> is interpretation of a text up for everyone to discuss or should the author have special privilege to adjudicate meanings?
  • cf. movies –> director interpreting a book —-> adaptation
  • is the author just another reader after the text is released? —>
  • line between what is part of the text and what is interpretation?
  • trying to assign motives to the author is problematic
  • how do we know what an author intends? — ask him. What if author misleads? what if author is dead? —> read biographies. rea
  • Author
  • biographies
  • introduction to an edition
  • life/ideas
  • interviews
  • wikipedia???
  • look at records related to life
  • journals
  • historical/socio-economic
  • analyze whole collection of books
  • newspaper articles
  • letters
  • read authors who inspired that authork
  • other authors in genre

 

CONTEXTS

Political/Social/Historical Context

  • what beliefs were generally held about the topic of book? ex. robots 150 years ago
  • social/racial/class issues at time
  • laws, constitutions – what type of government in country
  • economic issues – ex. industrialization of country
  • technological advances/issues/development
  • intellectual climate — what were people talking about, etc.

 

PRIMARY SOURCES — related to original publication. contemporaneous with it.

  • book itself
  • interview
  • writings by the author — journals, letters, manuscripts, published books
  • recordings of author speaking
  • autobiography
  • political documents — ex. presidential speech. text of a law
  • media recordings from that time

SECONDARY SOURCES — comes second/afterwards. provides analysis or intepretation

  • biography
  • critics writing about the book — newspapers, magazines, academic journals, academic books
  • online interpretation — blogs, etc.
  • documentary

 

 

ACTIVE READING

 

DISCUSSION OF CAVES OF STEEL

  • List 4-5 specific themes/motifs you see in the book
  • List 2-3 moments in the book — specific passages — that seem to you worthy of extended discussion (perhaps because they relate to the themes you listed, perhaps because they are really complicated). Look for especially rich/complicated/interesting moments that we can unpack together. Rich mineral deposits of textual meaning that we can break apart and examine.

THEMES/MOTIFS

  • Spacer/Human relations
  • Human survival —
  • Biblical references/allegories
  • Socialism/communal living
  • artificial / natural
  • efficiency – streamlining/regulating human behavior
  • earthmen/women viewed as primitives by spacers
  • classification — social stratification
  • conformity vs. individual expression (architecture/art)
  • human/robot tensions — fear that robots will take over jobs, or that robots will become as human as humans, will eradicate life on earth.
  • innocence of robots — r. sammy’s stupid smile (friendship circuit)
  • earthbound robots (r.sammy) vs. spacer robtots (olivaw)
  • fall of society on earth – Lije looking back at when it used to be better
  • tolerance/xenophobia — earthpeople afraid of spacers. tensions — cf. immigration stances in US
  • relation of spacer planets to earth — issues of power
  • spacer disgust at earthpeople — fear of disease

Prof. Gold’s

  • Foreignness/disease infection
  • line between human and robot
  • colonization – earth to space, space to earth
  • social class / privilege
  • urban space
  • biblical allusions
  • privacy / sexual issues

p. 91 — blood prick
— being treated like an animal — his consent doesn’t matter – because he’s a diseased earthman

— spacers treating humans as human colonizers used to treat colonized people

— issues of power

— themes — spacers/humans —

— spacers as GMO — selected for height, etc.

— spacers view earth as wild and untamed as earthpeople view life outside city walls

— trust — fear

— transgressiveness of pin prick/blood test

— fear of contamination

— border crossings