A Community: What Is A Community?

What is a community? Defined in the dictionary a community is “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.” (Webster). Communities bring people together but they are tear relationships apart. In the following stories the authors of this story demonstrates community as a whole. In Fully Alive, Story Telling Animal, Robopocalypse, Stepford Wives, The Happiness Machine, The Girl Who was Plugged In and The Cave, are stories that deal with community and how it is negative and positive for the characters in the books. In Fully Alive, Timothy Shriver talks about the special needs community. This is considered a positive community. The people that are mentioned in Timothy Shriver’s book create this

In the chapter “Pity of Purge” Timothy Shriver talks about the history of the community. In this chapter Shriver takes about the how, Greeks practiced infanticide on newborns with disabilities…” (Shriver 30) and because they were different they were treated as such. At this time no one knew what to do because it was not the norm. In addition to the culture some religious people were also negative. There would be many murders and also those with special needs were given up for adoption. It was not right but people were not able to handle and take of those with special needs. One thing Shriver thought was negative to the community is the phrases used when talking about special need people. Some of the words he describes in his book are, “de-formed, dis-eased, dis-abled, dis-ordered…” (Shriver 36). Shriver did not want people to feel low and negative about themselves just because they have special needs. Throughout this book Shriver mentions positive and negatives but overall he wants the reader to know that they may have special needs but they are just like everyone in the world. Lastly Shriver wants those with special needs not to be categorized as a special category but as one

This is a phrase that is said by many people after reading the Story Telling Animal by Johnathan Gottschall. This story was more if a negative story toward certain communities. One community in specific was the religious community, “religion is the ultimate expression of story’s dominion over our minds.” (Gottschall 119) Another quote that Gottschall mentions in the book is, “religion as a mental parasite” this was saying that religion is something we as humans need in are life to stay positive and hopeful for the future. The negative community in this story is that we use stories to better ourselves but is that okay for humans. This story could also be positive because humans need stories in their lives. Stories help humans stay happy and to know what is going on in the world. I believe this story does show more negative than