Thinking Activity: An Artist of the Floating World

 Hello friends !

 I am Bhavna Sosa and I am a student of the department of English MKBU. This blog is about thinking activity on the 'An Artist of the Floating World' by Kazuo Ishiguro. This task is assigned by Pro.Dr. Dilip Barad sir.

An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro, is set in Japan in the years just after the Second World War – which ended with the country’s surrender. It is narrated by Masuji Ono, a widower with two grown up daughters. His only son died in the hostilities. Resulting changes in the country are a challenge for the older generation as they watch their offspring embrace more western ideals.

1) 'Lantern' appears 34 times in the novel. Even on the cover page, the image of lanterns is displayed. What is the significance of Lantern in the novel?

Because Lanterns in the novel are associated with Ono’s teacher Mori-san. They represent the fleeting beauty and warmth of nightlife as well as the transience of the traditional way of life in Japan, which vanishes after the war.For Mori-san, the flickering, easily extinguished quality of lantern light symbolizes the transience of beauty and the importance of giving careful attention to small moments and details in the physical world.

2) write in brief a review of the film based on the novel.

In brief a review of the film based on the novel. An artist of the floating world in the face of the misery in his homeland,the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World war ll.

3)Debate on the Uses of Art / Artist (Five perspectives: 1. Art for the sake of art - aesthetic delight, 2. Art for Earning Money / Business purpose, 3. Art for Nationalism / Imperialism - Art for the propaganda of Government Power, 4. Art for the Poor / Marxism, and 5. No need of art and artist (Masuji's father's approach).

 Ono is the protagonist of An Artist of the Floating World, and is to be an acclaimed, significant artist. But while Ono is technically adept as a painter, his understanding of the world-and art’s role in it-is unsophisticated. Lacking a strong personal vision for his art and its message.That art serves no purpose other than to drive the artist into a life of self-absorption and depravity is presented through Ono’s father whose prediction that such a life will befall Ono ironically comes true for a time.The novel further explores the dire consequences which befell artists whose art is viewed as divergent. These five perspectives uses of the art.

 4) What is the relevance of this novel to our times?

  The novel's title 'An artist of the floating world' is based on the literal translation of Ukiyo-e, a word referring to the Japanese art of prints. Therefore, it can be read as "a printmaker" or "an artist living in a changing world," given both Ono's limited understanding and the dramatic changes his world, Japan in the first half of the twentieth century, has undergone in his lifetime.The title also refers to an artistic genre. Ono's master is especially interested in depicting scenes from the pleasure district adjacent to the villa in which he and his students live. 

Ono mentions the ephemeral nature of the floating world that could be experienced during each night. His master experiments with innovative softer Western-style painting techniques, rejecting the hard black outlining that was considered more traditional. Under the influence of right-wing political ideas about tradition, Ono becomes estranged from his master and forges his own career. He feels gleeful when his master's paintings fell into disfavor during a return to the use of more traditional bold lines in the paintings used for nationalistic posters.

Thinking Activity : 1984

Hello friends!!

I am Bhavna Sosa and I am a student of the department of English MKBU. This blog is about 1984 by George Orwell. This task given by our Pro.Dr. Dilip Barad sir

About George Orwell :-

Eric Arthur Blair known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, total opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

About 1984 :-

Nineteen Eighty-four, also published as 1984, novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949 as a warning against totalitarianism. The chilling dystopia made a deep impression on readers, and his ideas entered mainstream culture in a way achieved by very few books. The book’s title and many of its concepts, such as Big Brother and the Thought Police, are instantly recognized and understood, often as bywords for modern social and political abuses.

1) What is dystopian fiction? Is '1984' dystopian fiction?

 Dystopian Fiction :-

Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction that began as a response to utopian literature. A dystopia is an imagined community or society that is dehumanizing and frightening. A dystopia is an antonym of a utopia, which is a perfect society.

The dystopian genre imagines worlds or societies where life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror, and human society is characterized by human misery, such as squalor, oppression, disease, overcrowding, environmental destruction, or war.

'1984' as dystopian fiction :-

1984 by George Orwell belongs to the second category. It's a dystopian novel, which means that Orwell speculates on the future by emphasizing the ways a present situation could turn ugly. Unlike utopias and utopian fiction, which imagine a perfect and idealized society, dystopias dramatize the many ways things could go wrong. War could break out. The government could watch us on a massive surveillance system. People could lose the right of free speech, and censorship could make propaganda indistinguishable from the news.

All of these things come true in Orwell's 1984. The novel is bleak, gloomy, and pessimistic. This society Orwell portrays is ruled by fear. In Oceania, there is no freedom to speak of. It's the textbook example of dystopian society. Orwell re-imagines world geography and remaps the borders of countries. He establishes a perpetual war between three giant nations: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The first, Oceania, consists of the Americas and England, where the novel is set. The state is controlled by a totalitarian regime known as ''The Party,'' and an all-seeing law enforcement entity referred to as ''Big Brother.''

2) What according to you is the central theme of this novel?

Totalitarianism :-

The primary theme of 1984 by George Orwell is to warn readers of the dangers of totalitarianism. The central focus of the book is to convey the extreme level of control and power possible under a truly totalitarian regime. It explores how such a governmental system would impact society and the people who live in it. In the book, "the Party" represents communism, but can apply to any totalitarian or authoritarian approach to government. It's a cautionary tale on how tenuous freedom really is.

3) What do you understand about the term 'Orwellian'?

The term was named after British author Eric Blair known by his pen name George Orwell. Because his most famous work, the novel "1984," depicts an oppressive society under a totalitarian government, "Orwellian" is often used simply to mean authoritarian. But using the term in this way not only fails to fully convey Orwell's message, it actually risks doing precisely what he tried to warn against.n his essay, "Politics and the English Language," he described techniques like using pretentious words to project authority, or making atrocities sound acceptable by burying them in euphemisms and convoluted sentence structures. But even more mundane abuses of language can affect the way we think about things. The words you see and hear in everyday advertising have been crafted to appeal to you and affect your behavior, as have the soundbites and talking points of political campaigns which rarely present the most nuanced perspective on the issues. And the way that we use ready-made phrases and responses gleaned from media reports or copied from the Internet makes it easy to get away with not thinking too deeply or questioning your assumptions.

4)Write in brief about ' Newspeak' - and refer to Orwell and Painter's essays.

Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc in Oceania. Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will. Such concepts are criminalized as thoughtcrime since they contradict the prevailing Ingsoc orthodoxy.

It’s easy to hear “Newspeak,” the “official language of Oceania,” as “news speak.” This is perfectly reasonable, but it gives us the impression that it relates strictly to its appearance in mass media. Orwell obviously intended the ambiguity-it is the language of official propaganda after all-but the portmanteau actually comes from the words “new speak”and it has been created to supersede “Oldspeak,” Orwell writes, “or Standard English, as we should call it.”

Orwell then goes on to discuss the difficulty of translating the work of the past into Newspeak. He uses as an example the Declaration of Independence: “All men are equal'' was a possible Newspeak sentence,but only in that “it expressed a palpable untruth that all men are of equal size, weight, or strength.” As for the rest of Thomas Jefferson’s rousing preamble, “it would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak,” writes Orwell. “The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink.”

Thank you

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