Rani's Reflections

The abundance of drugs in Parable of the Sower is a representation of the abuse and necessity to “feel” something in society. It warps peoples thinking that corporations have caused this spread od destruction via drugs rather than abuse of power. At the same time these corporations have the power to “help” people and in turn can pay them an extremely small salary whilst providing enough structure where staying in this cycle is better than past situations. Pyro is the drug that claims to make “watching fire better than sex”. The addicts of the drugs are called “crazies” or “paints” because they paint their skin an assortment of colors before setting houses or even people on fire. I think this drug represents the imbalance of society the “paints” are an informality attacking the rich and the poor and causing the chaos in society. The poor are mad at the rich for in no way helping the social, political, economic, or environmental situation. They are upset with the “paints” for abusing t...

  When reading Parable of the Sower the conversation Lauren has with her father about the foraging book intrigued me. It never occurred to me that humans as a whole have strayed away from their primal instinct to forage. Simply using acorns isn’t a common practice anymore and it used to be the lifestyle of Native Americans. Why this resonated with me so much was actually due to a creator on tik tok. Her handle is @alexisnikole. She even specifically has a video about consuming acorns, but that's not all. She goes to parks and forests near her town and collects plants that we might consider weeds everyday. She shows free and easy ways you can find food that grows in your own backyard. All while giving defining characteristics of each plant so you know which are safe to eat. After each forging video she will come home and show recipes for teas, simple syrup, flour, everything can be made with things we find outside. All you have to do is open your eyes and know what to look for. I hi...

  Recipe for Acorn Bread: How to prepare acorns: Moldy, cracked, or infested acorns must be thrown out (you can float the acorns, the ones that sink are good to use) You must remove all the shells from the acorns and retrieve the meat ( a nutcracker can be beneficial for this step) Next, remove the toxic tannins from the acorns by boiling them, the tannins will make the water brown so repeat this process until the color is no longer removed Once the tannins are removed, roast the acorns for an hour at a low temp. (about 250 degrees) Making acorn flour: For reference you need about 2 pounds of acorns to make 3 cups of acorn flour You can simply blend the acorns into flour using a blender or a food processor Acorn Bread Ingredients: 1 cup of acorn flour 1 cup of all purpose flour (acorn flour can only be substituted for half the regular flour content in a recipe) 2 tablespoons of baking powder ½ a teaspoon of salt 3 tablespoons of sugar 1 egg beaten 1 cup of milk  3 tablespoons ...

 The main goal of preventing our time period from being described as Orwellian again is stopping a technological takeover. Our generation grew up in a time of advanced technology with constant break throughs in devices becoming more mobile and affordable. However, as a kid my parents made sure I didn’t have access to these until it was absolutely necessary, or I was considered old enough. Much of my childhood was spent off screens and outside and I am grateful for that. It allowed me to use my childlike creativity in a setting where it wasn’t prompted. By this I mean, I and I alone was tasked with keeping myself entertained. Whether that was riding my bike for hours around the neighborhood or pretending to serve nature soup made of grass and mud. My imagination had full control of its surrounding and there were no limitations. For me, to prevent a technological takeover or an Orwellian time is to implement ways our generation was raised with our kids. So many times, I see gets si...

              Put simply, I thought the end of the book was fitting for the novel. Throughout 1984 we saw Winston’s journey with himself. Winston increasingly became more and more discontent with big brother.  The one thing that keeps society happy had the opposite effect on his emotion. The end was symbolic of the control that the party had over its people.               Originally, I was upset by the ending as I was hoping for the defiant ending, seeing a breakthrough in 1984. I saw the ending as Winston giving up but in reality, it’s far from that. Before section three of this book I would’ve argued that Winston would rather die than be under big brothers control but I seen now that he would rather fit in. Why else would he endure all the torture and betray Julia unless he wanted a chance at life again. In a way, the end is the new beginning for W...

During one of Winston’s countless torture sessions, O’ Brien states that it’s not enough to follow the party you must love it. Love the party, a simple thing that Winston cannot comprehend to do. He is empowered by his hatred for Big Brother and wants to die with control of his own thought. However, throughout the book it’s always been the mind under control and I never realized how important a love for big brother is. In the end the love for big brother is what keeps society happy not the control of thought. In theory everyone might hate what they are told to think but their blind love for big brother prevents them from realizing it. In the end of this section we begin to see Winston break from this. Winston realizes his hatred for big brother in begins screaming in his cell and inevitably is taken to room 101. Here, O’Brien places him in a chair and informs Winston that this will be the worst torture he has endured. O’Brien explains that a cage of rats will feed on flesh and at thi...

  Newspeak In George Orwell’s 1984 the language newspeak is arguably one of the main forms of brainwashing. This works by slowly diminishing the vocabulary until the language is so bare-boned that room for thought can’t fathom to exist. Whilst this is not like languages today some of the aspects are still similar. We tend to shorten phrases in our language today our formal form is not how we speak in our everyday lives. For example, we wouldn’t say, “I would like to invite you to my house tonight” rather “we would say do you want to come over tonight”. Newspeak eliminates the language down to a basic structure where there is no formal and informal way of language. It’s universally simple.  There are a couple articles claiming that newspeak is much like our language now. These articles don’t speak of newspeak in a grammatical structure but rather as language being an expression an extension of our identity. The argument of these articles is that our language is limited by socia...