Drovers

This was a fairly easy read considering the time period. There were simple sentence structures, making an overall periodic style. Although he tends to write in lists and complex sentence structures when he's describing people or scenes. For example, when we meet Robin: "Of the number who left Doune in the morning, and with the purpose we described, not a Glunamaie of them all cocked his bonet more briskly, or gatered his tartar hose under knee over a pair of more promising spiogs (legs) than did Robin Oig M'Combuch, called familiarly Robin Oig, that is, Young, or the lesser, Robin." There's about 6 commas in there and about three different thoughts. 1) of the people who left in Doune 2)nobody cocked their bonets more briskly or gatered their tartars like Robin 3)Robin's clan name and his position being the "lesser" or "young."


The dialogue was difficult to comprehend. There were tons of slang terms I didn't understand like "Sual of my pody[...]" and "The drove can pe gang two, three, four miles [...]."

First person narration came out of nowhere.

Douglas

Very cleanly conveyed thoughts, there were no multiple thoughts squeezed into run on sentences. The style was neither overtly flowery nor ignorant. It was a style similar to Hemingway, but slightly more detailed and a tad more advanced in his word usage. The frustrations of the author were successfully communicated, though he never came right out and said "I felt angry and frustrated." Neither one of those words were ever used. Instead he says,"[...] I was led to abhor and detest enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers [...]" Words like "detest" and "could regard" are far more controlled and calculating, giving off the feeling of irritation rather than rage.. It was an extremely disturbing read how he couldn't trust anyone and how he felt once he knew that slavery was unjust. His method of showing rather than telling, and all of his "I" uses are probably what made the piece so mentally accessible. His soul was in "unutterable anguish," this is the closest he could say to what he was feeling because there are no words strong enough for the repressing feeling of slavery. His patience and determination inspired me. It also made me grateful for my easily attained education, his story goes to show that ignorance is slavery.

Conrad

Good god this took such a long time for me to read even though it wasn't that long. His descriptions felt like that would never end. The writing just seemed cliche to me, which might be another reason why I had trouble getting through this.

"When I left him there to go back to my room the steward was finishing dusting. I sent for the mate and engaged him in some insignificant conversation. It was, as it were, trifling with the terrific character of his whiskers; but my object was to give him an opportunity for a good look at my cabin. And then I could at last shut, with a clear conscience, the door of my stateroom and get my double back into the recessed part. There was nothing else for it. e had to sit still on a small folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there. We listened to the steward going into the bathroom out of the saloon, filling the water bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things to rights, whisk, bang, clatter -- out again into the saloon -- turn the key click. Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible. Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances. And there we sat; I at my writing desk ready to appear busy with some papers, he behind me out of sight of the door. It would not have been prudent to talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the excitement of that queer sense of whispering to myself. Now and then, glancing over my shoulder, I saw him far back there, sitting rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded, his head hanging on his breast -- and perfectly still. Anybody would have taken him for me."

We have varying long and short sentences. A lot of dependent clauses and plenty of room to break up them up in order to make them more simple to read. He packs so much info into his sentence that it ends up running for multiple lines. He trys to make it sound like if it is a stream of consciousness as if he is simply remembering these events. But nobody actually talks or thinks like this.
There are some parallels between him and his double here. He felt that this man was him in a different body. Anybody would have mistaken him for the captain. They also had similar manners of behaving. I think the captain saw a lot of his younger self in this boy and thats why he wants to protect him.

"On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned for ever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach."

As far as word choice, we have an overall medium style of writing. He varies between simple language and more complex words, though I think he likes to use the more latin rooted words. Speaking of prolonged sentences, the example above is only the first sentence of the passage. It could have been broken up to at least five sentences.

Overall he did a go job at pointing you in a place. He's very good at giving visuals, even the process of reading his work is difficult. He succeeded in making a certain eerie mood that followed to the end as well. In other words, the tone and emotional state was consistent.

"The dark side of multiculturallism"

It was really hard for me to analyze this prose because the subject matter was so intense and eye-opening. First I read "The European Dilemma, it's starts of with a scene, which gave me the notion that this was going to be a bit on the sensational side. But then it just got more and more intense with mutilation of female genitalia and female abuse. This article largely appealed to personal experience where as the other argued with statistics. I was convinced of multiculturalism as being bad, which I guess of Ali's view. But I think the point of the article is to argue that it could be bad. Multiculturalism isn't bad, it's old taboos which interfere with freedoms we enjoy in Western society. And as a member of such a society I feel other should be granted the same freedom I have. I agree with Buruma's the notion that the answer is not forced atheism, there must be another way. People should have the right to religion. Just a generation ago woman were also repressed in western culture, and it had nothing to do with religion. But at the same time, the bible also doesn't point out to "write male superiority on the flesh of women." That statement thoroughly shocked me. "That language of wounds and bruises." I didn't like how Ali called Islam a backwards religion, I think almost all religion can be taken to extremes. But I couldn't help with agreeing with her view of injustice simply because of her personal experience. She said true Islam is irreconcilable with secular states." I think that's also perspective, I'm sure there is a way to view it as peaceful and I'm sure not all Isamist think that. What they are lacking is education, a different view of the world. If Western society ended the terror hold of the catholic church, I'm sure the future holds the same for Islam. The West used to have mass burnings of unbelievers just a few hundred years ago. And now look at the situation. These are just the patterns of human nature for whatever reason. We need to penetrate their media, so they can be like all the Europeans who want to be just like Americans (I'm kidding).


After reading the dilemma peace, Steyn's peace just crushed me. All the statistics. But at the same time his solution is either we need to start having a shit ton of babies or kill all the Islamic believers in order preserves Western thought. Although he never flats out and says it, this is his argument. It makes perfect sense except he fails to take into consideration the marvels of Western science and manipulation. While it's true that some countries which can't afford to feed themselves have babies, he still have more intelligence. We have robots and spy plans and all sorts of crazy gadgets. Look how we brought down the reds in Russia, and without military force. Of course he argure that they are fighting in similar ways, without weapons and with lots of semen. When and if Europe does become Eurasia, I think the Europeans won't go down without a fight. Spain has also made strict immigrations laws for Africans, I'm sure these other countries will have to suck up the idea of appearing racist and follow suit. He does have a good point about America and England, but for the most part the radicals are living in the stone age. And like I said, we have some crazzy crazy intelligence on out side. It won't be the same battle in my opinion.

Some stats I found:

1. 80% of the women in Oslo's shelter system are Muslims fleeing abusive families, husbands, and boyfriends;

2. Danish Muslims make up 5% of the population but 40% of the welfare rolls;

3. refugee—friendly Switzerland is already 20% Muslim;

4. the world's most wonderful city (in my view) Amsterdam is now majority Muslim;

5. 70% of all French prisoners are Muslim;

6. the four London bombers that killed 56 in July of 2005 received almost a million dollars in welfare benefits.

This whole situation kind of reminds me of the American civil war. I think what we need is enlightenment, all of us need to be aware. The middle east needs to learn tolerance and the west needs to think about what they are going to do about these statistics. In the future, there probably won't be race, we probably will be just a group of brown people like in that episode of south park where people from the future come to visit. That's alright, but if the future is going to be intolerant towards women and freedom, well that I have a harder time trying to swallow. I just don't see it happening, I can't see it happening. Please don't let it happen? I know I will dying fighting, and I'm a pacifist. But when I'm 80 years old and the government announces all women will have to have their clits chopped off, that's the day I blow up the white house or whatever power will be in that time. Besides, if westerns become the minority to that degree, they will become poor, and the poor always have more babies for whatever reason. We'll populate japan alright, trust me.

Speaking of which, another shocking part of Styln's piece is the whole story of that toy company making dolls for elderly people in Japan. That absolutely crushed me. Then he mentions it as part of are slippery slope towards transhumanism. Good god, all this stuff is crazy. Then it could get into this whole philosophical discussion of are we our bodies? Or are we our memories? What makes us human? Can we become computers so that we could live forever?


On the technical side of things, both dictions were quite different. Steyn used a lot of colons. A lot of if x then y. Y because x. It was mathematical. Homles read more like a novel style of prose, a lot of long sentences and clauses. But it was still very cleanly written and extremely easy to understand.

Paste

Good dialogue, terrible descriptions. Whenever he tried to set up a scene it took so damn long for him to say what he was getting at that it was hard to stay focused. It wasn't "aesthetically" pleasing either. The first sentence of descriptiontake up three lines.

"The pair of mourners, sufficiently stricken, were in the garden of the vicarage together, before luncheon, waiting to be summoned to that meal, and Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other.
Some such appearance was in itself of course natural within a week of his stepmother's death, within three of his father's; but what was most present to the girl, herself sensitive and shrewd, was that he seemed somehow to brood without sorrow, to suffer without what she in her own case would have called pain."

"Of feeling or some other" is so vague, and it doesn't say anything. "She would have called pain," come on! What does that even mean? Also, using words Latin words like "vicarage" makes it all the more a bore. There's simply too many pauses. His style is beyond suspense, it's downright torture.

But, as mentioned before his dialogue is a nice break of the distractingly tortuous parts where he narrates, I got the most out of the story when the characters spoke. But even they they did speak he would butt his fat pen in to add verbs or other info. This probably would have read better as a play. The overall story was alright I guess. The whole hinting that this old actress was a prostitute or had lovers I'm sure for the time was probably really entertaining. At the same time, I couldn't help but think the whole situation seemed a little too far fetched. And I'm not sure what he was getting at when Mrs. Guy would talk about the pearls as if they were alive.

Communist Crap

It was really funny to be reading this because both my parents were born in Cuba, so I kind of felt naughty for reading this. Anyway, I can see how it can be conniving. This establish a solid argument by giving examples of the past and how it was, and saying this is how it is, and this is how its going to be. The system itself is going to destroy itself because of it's nature. The second part where the answer to the problem is simply to end private property is where the whole thing falls apart for me. Obviously this is an issue that has more roots than private property. Class struggles have been going on forever, and it seems like there's nothing much we can do about it. I don't think handing over everything over to the government works because then they become the oppressors.


"Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat." --> this is using terror to get people to do something. It seems very new-ish and very "well if you don't do what we say, you're screwed."


"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." --->Basically stating they have stripped us of all our values and now everything revolves around money. While this is true, I wouldn't say it's completely stripped us of values. This is a very "us versus them" way of thinking about it. While we are being "exploited", in a certain sense, their answer or solution involves just as much exploitation to people. What's missing is balance.

"It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers." This is true, but what were they before? Now anybody could be these things and before only those from wealthy families could evolve to become such professionals. It all seems very dramatic.

"The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation." Another good example of over-dramatization. If families are falling apart, I'm sure there much more to it than money.

"Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them." Making people think of themselves as slaves is a very powerful image, and I think that's why this document works. People do feel like slaves when they're working.


"These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market." Also bringing the attention to the fact that we are looked at as commodities is a powerful image.


The machine metaphor makes it sound scary.