What does “authority” look like to us and why?
The Paper Menagerie By Ken Liu (WAIT to do this until after we read it in class).
Authority can be rejected, but when authority is rejected consequences may come with that...
“I took the letter with me downtown where I knew they could speak chinese”
The fact that the narrator must rely on other Chinese people's culture to remember his mother is sad, and ultimately, pathetic. The Narrator feels regret of rejecting his chinese heritage, because now he is suffering the consequences of not being able to speak chinese, when he needs to be able to speak chinese to remember his late mother.
because the narrator rejecting the authority of his mother, he struggles to make up for the lost guidance of a parent, and realizes that rejecting the authority of his mother and his chinese culture did nothing but handicap his ability to interact with his mother in his adulthood.
body busily moving about in the kitchen, singing a song in Chinese to herself, it was hard to believe she had given birth to me. We had nothing in common"
The Narrator refuses to be related to his mother, and claims they have nothing in common. This shows his frustration and anger at having chinese heritage instead of being American like all the other kids in the connecticut suburbs.
The narrator is trying to gain authority over his own mother. He is doing this by refusing his chinese heritage, and saying his mother does not have authority over him. They have nothing in common.
I know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Authority can come from different forms of power, and sometimes authroity can be as little as singing, but it is still significant because the bird has authority over something.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
Both birds have different standards and want different things. The authority they have is based off of their situation. The the free bird is living his best life and the caged bird is stuck in agony, they both assort some sort of dominance or of authority. The free bird looks for worms, while the caged bird sings.
Edmund Burke's Theory on the Sublime. To refresh your memory look at the notes on Edmund Burke and what you jotted today.
Humans need to be reminded that they are ultimately unimportant to feel a sense or security, and be humiliated to realize that their actions are not as important as they believe.
When it comes to authority, we can relate this to Edmund Burkes Theory on the Sublime because if humans are reminded that their power and authority is in the long run not significant and compared to the size of the world they are pointless, than that power and authority might be used in smarter and more efficient ways.
A Children's Story By James Clavell
How did this story help you to come up with an answer to the unit question that is different from the other stories?
"The children stopped crying because miss Worden never sang to them"
Here the teacher is again reassuring the children, with methods that she knows previous teachers didn't use, such as singing. Since she knows that the previous teacher never sang to the children, she is singing to them to gain more power than Ms. Worden.
Because the new teacher once again is using her new found authority to undermine other sources of authority, she is able to claim a stronger sense of power and authority than 'anything or anyone else'.
"Only I or someone like me can give you things. Praying to god or anything or anyone else for something is a waste of time"
The words "Only I" show the teacher trying to claim complete authority and dominance over the class. She is taking away the power from 'god' or the children's parents, because she is giving the children a sense of reassurance in her powers and undermining other authority in the childrens' lives.
The reassurance the teacher provides to the children shows the power and authority she holds. She not only has authority over the children but she wants more power and authority than anything, or anyone else.
"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Marquez
How did this story help you to come up with an answer to the unit question that is different from the other stories? This story helped me realize authority is shifted through people and what people believe. The authority in this story wasn't given to the angel because he was an angel,m but rather because people believed he was an angel. Whether he was or wasn't an angel is actually irrelevant to the story until he needs to fly away. They just needed to believe he was an angel, and as soon as someone contested that thought, in this case the priest, the angel lost authority and people no longer seeked to come see him, or ask help from him.
“He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.”
"poor fellow", and "So old" show that the people feel pity for the angel, and at this point in the story they believe the angel to be a fragile, friendly, elderly creature, that just wants to help.
The old lady helping the family is clearly distraught for the angel. The words 'poor fellow' and 'old' show that the lady helping them is pitying the angel for being an elderly man, and she believes that because he is old, he is weak. This shows how she is dismissing her authority over the man in this situation. Instead of taking advantage of his ill state and sending him on the sea on a raft like the family wanted to do, the lady neighbor is using her authority to try and reason for him and help him.
Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.
The words "sigh of relief", "annoyance" all convey the mixed emotions Elisenda is feeling at the angels departure. Elisenda feels relieved that her family is no longer in the limelight for having an angel in their backyard. I believe that she has yet to realize that the Angel brought them more than misfortune.
This relates to the unit question because the Angel held unwanted authority over Elisenda; they could not kick him out because of all the people coming to see him, so Elisenda was stuck with him in his home, where they could lock him up, but ultimately he had the authority to stay locked up or leave the home.
