Each person
in the discussion had brought their own set of original questions, so many
topics were brought up and discussed. I found that many of my questions focused
around similar topics/themes, particularly emotions. I asked more questions
regarding the indoctrination of the people in 1984, and what they might have felt, or how they came to believe
certain lies. Being able to have the seminar influenced me into thinking of a
wider range of topics, as my classmates brought up other ideas, among many they
included the corruption of power, communication and interactions between
children and adults. Something said that I had not thought of so much before
was a comment on the richness of language. Somebody shared their opinion that
the loss of words made language less rich, and thus made it less meaningless,
and harder to express oneself verbally in front of others. Before, I had
considered the usage of other mediums, such as music or dance, but did not
fully visualize the idea of being verbally limited in expressing ideas and
emotions.
A statement
I agreed with during the seminar was one made on the objective of the Party in 1984 to remove emotions, and only
inflict feelings of loyalty towards the Party. Many of my peers built off of
this idea, adding on that emotional bonds between people would come between the
totalitarian rulers and their subjects, making human devotion towards other
humans a setback, and a dangerous prospect that could even lead to
revolution. There were no
statements that I particularly disagreed with. I found many of the comments of
my peers to be fair arguments, which I found myself supporting/building off of. A topic that I think should be further
discussed in the seminars is that of memories. More specifically, how credible
are the memories of the citizens in 1984?
How credible are our own memories? I feel this is an interesting question as in
1984, the memories of many are wiped
or manipulated, making their memories almost fake, incredulous, or just
unreliable. Meanwhile, in our world, many people treasure memories, and share
them with others. So much can be stored in the memory of one person, and we
will often believe professional individuals and their capability to memorize
information, and present analysis from their memories. I would have liked to
know what other people thought about the differences memory plays in 1984 versus our very own society.
I feel that
everybody in my discussion made an effort to get each person to
speak/participate, which worked well as we were able to get a greater flow of
ideas from different people. Further, I could tell that everybody was prepared
based on the diverse set of questions I heard from my classmates, and the
responses, as well as textual evidence that everybody supplied. I felt that
because people were prepared and tried to get others engaged, the discussion
was enriched, and there was never a lack of topics to discuss. Had people not
come prepared, there would be a larger chance that the questions would be less
interesting, and the responses less well crafted. I also felt that as a whole,
the group did well at building off of the ideas of others. Little was simply
repeated, instead people tried to contribute new thoughts or arguments or
quotes to support their thoughts/opinions.
Similar to
what my other classmates stated just after the seminar, I felt that overall
people agreed with each other, and few debates took place. We were able to
contribute new ideas when we built off of others, and supported their answers,
yet the discussion could have been better if more controversial topics were
discussed in order to hear all of the different points of views that people may
possess. This would have opened more windows into the discussion, and could
have opened more topics for debate, as well as more opportunities to use
various rhetorical appeals. Additionally, because each person thought of their
own individual questions, many people would end up answering their own
questions, due to the fact that thinking of a strong answer requires time.
Although it was great to have each person contribute new questions and ideas,
it would have been nice to have one or two questions in advanced so that each
person would have a developed answer to that much, especially if they do not
feel comfortable speaking.
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