Madurodam has been the smallest city in the Netherlands since its inception in 1952. Its tributaries and canals measuring no more than a finger’s width. Its ornately crafted Dutch gabled houses would make amiable summer residences for rodents. Its immaculate portrayal of railway lines would have any train-spotter paralyzed with awe. This war-monument-turned-amusement-park steals the imagination of children and adults alike. There is a certain human tendency to associate affection with objects of a reduced size. Maybe it is this affection that serves as the reason almost all of the toys we make for children, as Roland Barthes puts it, “are essentially a microcosm of the adult world [...] reduced copies of human objects,” (“Toys” 689). One might argue that toys of this kind allow for the child to more quickly adjust to the conventions of the world they are about to be members of, but does such ritual conformity repress creative freedom, a birth right of every child? Delving into Barthes’s text in the hospital-like, fluorescent annex of Bobst, I pondered the causalities of this question. An excerpt from “Mythologies”, “Toys” follows Barthes’s social commentary on the French toy industry during the 1970’s. In his view, “French toys always mean something, and this something is always entirely socialized,”(89). These toys that exist as a representation are always given meanings which configure the child to social protocols. We can speculate from toys of different periods, each representative of a different part of the world, and draw parallels concerning their functions: “There exist, for instance, dolls which urinate; they have an esophagus, one gives them a bottle, they wet their nap[-]pies,”(89). Barthes believes that “[they] ... ... middle of paper ... ... constructs we built for ourselves; we have become the children and we make toys for ourselves that condition in a vicious cycle of pathetic stagnation. Find your Campbell Soup Cans, your reclusive pond, your place in a family that stands out... and you will have found yourself. Works Cited Barthes, Roland. “Toys.” Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. Ed. Robert DiYanni and Pat C. Hoy II. Boston: Thomson, 2008. 689-90. Print. Kingsolver, Barbara. “Stone Soup” Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. Ed. Robert DiYanni and Pat C. Hoy II. Boston: Thomson, 2008. 274-78. Print. Thoreau, Henry David. “Why I Went to the Woods.” Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. Ed. Robert DiYanni and Pat C. Hoy II. Boston: Thomson, 2008. 577-581. Print. Warhol, Andy. “Campbell Soup Cans”. 1962. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). New York, NY.
In Chapter 2 Toys Aren’t Us Elkind explains how most children have too much and can not focus on what is important. “All of these changes have impacted the personal, and social skills, attitudes, and values children acquire from toy play” (Elkind, 15). When Elkind mentions changes he means how toys
Everyone wants to fill the void within themselves, and most humans try to accomplish this by finding jobs they enjoy, but it seems that most of them ultimately fail. When you are younger you look to your parents to show you the way, but as you approach adulthood you start to feel more of a sense of rebellion toward them instead of the admiration you once had. The writer makes the poem universal by saying he didn’t want to end up like his father, something most children in north america could relate to. It’s also easily linked to our society in north america because of the way our schooling system is set up, in a way that you must commit to what you’re going to do for the rest of your life when you’re still too young to vote, and our system being this way makes it easy to end up regretting what you choose. Humans in modern society are expected to make many commitments for a range of things- relationships or sports teams, even major life decisions, and it’s obvious that our natural need for commitment is prevalent in our everyday life. Consequently, this need for making commitments can end up leaving people making poor decisions or at least taking a route you’ll end up wanting to renounce in the
“The Veldt” is a short and twisting story written in 1950 by Ray Bradbury about the Hadley family who lives in a futuristic world that ends up “ruining human relationships and destroying the minds of children” (Hart). The house they live in is no ordinary home, Bradbury was very creative and optimistic when predicting future technology in homes. This house does everything for the residence including tying shoes, making food, and even rocking them to sleep. The favourite room of the children, Peter and Wendy, is the forty by forty foot nursery. This room’s setting reacts to the children’s thoughts. Everything from the temperature to the ground’s texture responds to the environment Wendy and Peter imagine, and in this case, an African veldt. All the advanced technology is intended for positive uses, but instead, becomes negative, consumerism catches up, and does harm by coming to life, and killing Lynda and Bob Hadley. Ray Bradbury develops his theme that consumerism is a negative concept, in his short story, “The Veldt” through the use of foreshadowing, allusion, and irony.
Langås, U. (2005). What Did Nora Do? Thinking Gender with A Doll's House. Ibsen Studies, 5(2), 148-171. doi:10.1080/15021860500424254
As one enters the gallery, one experiences the fun of looking at simple, painted drawings of six men on the wall talking on cell phones with letters reading “idiots” in their mouths. Across the room space, machine-like drawings as well as drawings of people dominate the walls. Different abstracted, simplified people like sculptures as well as machine like sculptures are spread across the floor. This reminds of a childlike setting where everything is just spread across the room instead of being carefully organized. The second room is also organized in the same manner with some...
Divorce leads to happiness. As odd as divorce leading to happiness may sound, it contains truth. “Stone Soup”, written by Barbara Kingsolver, contains her personal experience with divorce, and the effects divorce had on her family. Kingsolver uses personal experience, to demonstrate that divorce frees the families from bondage.
As the speaker hunts with his father, he has learned to meditate. When the speaker grows older, he can “spend whole mornings in the bush, … [his] senses riveted on the changing patterns of light, colour, form, and sound in the forest” (4). Meditation strengthens his connection with the nature and merely sitting in the bush satisfies him. Meanwhile, his children follow the culture of instant pleasure. On Christmas morning, the children at first “thoroughly [explore] the possibilities of [the] new [toys]” (7), but their level of satisfaction drops rapidly and by lunch time, “[they] were off playing with the empty boxes” (7). Their behaviour suggests that the culture of consumption heavily influences them and the many material goods can only entertain them for half a day. This creates a contrast with the speaker’s meditation and implies that people nowadays only focuses on
“We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.” This quote from Montag sums up the effects of a deteriorated social society. He recognizes that people have gotten to a point where they are a slave to their techonolgy, but he has no idea where to start, and in the end, the fixing begins at the end.
“We start with an image—a tiny, golden child on hands and knees, circling round and round a spot on the floor in mysterious, self-absorbed delight. She does not look up, though she is smiling and laughing; she does not call our attention to the mysterious object of her pleasure. She does not see us at all. She and the spot are all there is, and though she is eighteen months old, an age for touching, tasting, pointing, pushing, exploring, she is doing none of these. She does not walk, or crawl up stairs, or pull herself to her feet to reach for objects. She doesn’t want any objects. Instead, she circles her spot. Or she sits, a long chain in her hand, snaking it up and down, up and down, watching it coil and uncoil, for twenty minutes, half an hour--- until someone comes, moves her or feeds her or gives her another toy, or perhaps a book.”
James, A. (1998). From the child's point of view: Issues in the social construction of
Ibsen, Henrik. The Project Gutenberg EBook of a Doll's House. [EBook #2542]. The Project Gutenberg, 13 Dec. 2008. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. .
Ibsen, Henrik. "A Doll's House." Literature the Human Experience. Shorter 8th Ed. Eds. Richard Abcarian and Marvin Klotz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. 2004. 437-495.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Voices in the Park were published at either end of the twentieth century, a period which witnessed the creation of the modern picturebook for children. They are both extremely prestigious examples of picturebooks of their type, the one very traditional, the other surrealist and postmodern. The definition of ‘picturebook’ used here is Bader’s: ‘an art form [which] hinges on the interdependence of pictures and words, on the simultaneous display of two facing pages, and on the drama of the turning of the page’ (Bader, quoted in Montgomery, 2009, p. 211). In contrast with a simple illustrated book, the picturebook can use all of the technology available to it to produce an indistinguishable whole, the meaning and value of which is dependent on the interplay between all or any of these aspects. Moebius’s claim that they can ‘portray the intangible and invisible[. ], ideas that escape easy definition in pictures or words’ is particularly relevant to these two works.
"Realism and the Significance of A Doll's House." Wikispaces.com. Ed. Tangient LLC. Wikispaces, 2011. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. .
... satisfied with life. Through the ‘focusing illusion’ we convince ourselves that satisfaction equals happiness. Unfortunately it doesn’t. Even though we appear to have everything, we are left feeling that something is missing, but are unable to identify what that thing is.