Oh, really?
I went to it. Here. Doesn't look ambiguous at all to me. Game on!
Showing posts with label ambiguity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ambiguity. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Thursday, January 3, 2013
"They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house."
I decided to pluck something from Chapter 1 for today's entry in the "Great Gatsby" project. I randomly selected the sentence that appears above. You must believe me that it is indeed random, and yet someone had just emailed me to say he liked the Gatsby project and:
The "they" is perplexing in another, more disturbing way, because it reappears halfway through in "as if they had just been blown back." We're given a simile that asks us to picture the women, in their white dresses, flying around the house at some earlier moment. They — the women — look like they just landed, as their dresses are "rippling and fluttering" from a recent "short flight." But to say "their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back" is to create ambiguity, the possibility that the "they" was "their dresses," and we might feel called upon to picture the dresses, by themselves, flying around the house before getting blown back onto the 2 erstwhile naked women. The flying-around-the-house image is fantastical, so we can't tap our our knowledge of what is possible and what is probable, and yet, somehow we know it was the women in their dresses who seem as if they'd just flown around the house and gotten blown back in.
I think the problem of 2 possible antecedents for the second "they" is a writing error, and this Gatsby project is premised on the greatness of the sentences. I hate to be the one to have to say a good editing eye would have seen that ambiguity, but the greatness of the sentence-writing doesn't require a complete absence of error, and the logic of the sentence precludes the dresses flying around the house on their own because we can't picture the dresses getting back on the women without losing the "rippling and fluttering" action caused by the flight and landing. So enough of that. Stop picturing naked women waiting while their dresses fly around the house.
It was the women, so magical and light, like birds or butterflies, that flew around the house. They could fly, but they didn't fly far, only around the house which they got blown back into. These women don't have much ambition or power on their own. They are housebound, even though they can fly. They do an orbit of the house and then a breeze sweeps them back in. But here they are, so pretty in their fluttery white dresses. And of course, they only look as if they'd taken that charmingly domestic flight. The truth is they are sitting together in the house, and they haven't been going anywhere. But there is a breeze, a breeze that might blow a butterfly into the house, and it ripples their flimsy dresses.
When I was a Harvard Freshman in 58-59, I took the required freshman English class and the instructor was an expert on Gatsby....Now, how can my correspondent believe that I randomly picked a sentence with 2 women in white? But, on my purest honor, I did. We're focusing on sentences, so I don't know or care whether Daisy was one of the 2 women. I won't presume, though I will presume that the 2 entities known as "They" are women, given that they are wearing dresses. We must bring our knowledge of what is possible and what is probable to the enterprise of reading, even as we bear down on an isolated sentence. One or both of "them" might be a transvestite male (or a nonhuman), but I'm going to presume 2 women (or girls).
At one point while we were reading Gatsby for the class, he remarked "Have you noticed that whenever you see Daisy in the novel, she is wearing white?"
The "they" is perplexing in another, more disturbing way, because it reappears halfway through in "as if they had just been blown back." We're given a simile that asks us to picture the women, in their white dresses, flying around the house at some earlier moment. They — the women — look like they just landed, as their dresses are "rippling and fluttering" from a recent "short flight." But to say "their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back" is to create ambiguity, the possibility that the "they" was "their dresses," and we might feel called upon to picture the dresses, by themselves, flying around the house before getting blown back onto the 2 erstwhile naked women. The flying-around-the-house image is fantastical, so we can't tap our our knowledge of what is possible and what is probable, and yet, somehow we know it was the women in their dresses who seem as if they'd just flown around the house and gotten blown back in.
I think the problem of 2 possible antecedents for the second "they" is a writing error, and this Gatsby project is premised on the greatness of the sentences. I hate to be the one to have to say a good editing eye would have seen that ambiguity, but the greatness of the sentence-writing doesn't require a complete absence of error, and the logic of the sentence precludes the dresses flying around the house on their own because we can't picture the dresses getting back on the women without losing the "rippling and fluttering" action caused by the flight and landing. So enough of that. Stop picturing naked women waiting while their dresses fly around the house.
It was the women, so magical and light, like birds or butterflies, that flew around the house. They could fly, but they didn't fly far, only around the house which they got blown back into. These women don't have much ambition or power on their own. They are housebound, even though they can fly. They do an orbit of the house and then a breeze sweeps them back in. But here they are, so pretty in their fluttery white dresses. And of course, they only look as if they'd taken that charmingly domestic flight. The truth is they are sitting together in the house, and they haven't been going anywhere. But there is a breeze, a breeze that might blow a butterfly into the house, and it ripples their flimsy dresses.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Voter fraud: "Oh, my God. This is so funny. It’s cool though."
Quote from the regional field director for Obama’s Organizing For America, caught on video helping a woman who was obviously trying to vote twice.
ADDED: The link goes to The Daily Caller where the headline — "Obama campaign staffer caught helping activist vote twice" — has an ambiguity that undercuts the power of the story. Maybe it was just a really helpful staffer who helped a woman who needed help and then needed help again.
Caballero... offers the videographer an excuse to get out of trouble is she gets caught committing voter fraud: “Come up with like if anyone checks say ‘I don’t know.’”This is James O’Keefe/Project Veritas material, and he says he's got more like that.
ADDED: The link goes to The Daily Caller where the headline — "Obama campaign staffer caught helping activist vote twice" — has an ambiguity that undercuts the power of the story. Maybe it was just a really helpful staffer who helped a woman who needed help and then needed help again.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Things Madeleine Albright cannot understand.
"I'm not sure I'm going to state this exactly right," said the woman we once relied on to speak for America in the most delicate and momentous affairs*:
* I'm referring to foreign diplomacy, in her role as Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, but having written "most delicate and momentous affairs," I realized you might think I was referring to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, which was "a most delicate and momentous affair" of a different kind. But there, she didn't speak for us. She spoke to us. She was the most prominent of the Clinton Cabinet members who allowed themselves to be pulled forward to vouch for him, and she famously said, "I believe that the allegations are completely untrue." The powerful man must be right, and the little lady must be lying. This, from a woman who now "frankly" doesn't "understand" how women think.
And by the way, that new quote of hers is damned sexist. She can't visualize how a woman could reason and analyze and come to a conclusion that the more conservative approach is better. She presents women — all women, apparently — as voting based on some kind of fuzzy, feel-y thinking about women, within which the only appeal of Romney is his wife.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.
Think about it, Ms. Albright.
ADDED: An emailer prompts me to see an alternative meaning in the phrase "why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney." Obviously, I thought she was saying that some women might find Ann Romney so appealing that they'd want to vote for Romney. But now I see the ambiguity in those words. It can also mean that the only woman who'd want to vote for Mitt Romney is his wife. I think that is probably is what she meant. Actually, the whole quote is a mess (except for her one obviously true statement, which she herself flags as obvious: she's "a card-carrying Democrat").
"But I think there are some who believe they are actually protecting women, you know, and that it is better for women to be taken care of. I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important. And frankly, I don’t understand —I mean, I'm obviously a card-carrying Democrat — but I can't understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney."____________________________________________
* I'm referring to foreign diplomacy, in her role as Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, but having written "most delicate and momentous affairs," I realized you might think I was referring to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, which was "a most delicate and momentous affair" of a different kind. But there, she didn't speak for us. She spoke to us. She was the most prominent of the Clinton Cabinet members who allowed themselves to be pulled forward to vouch for him, and she famously said, "I believe that the allegations are completely untrue." The powerful man must be right, and the little lady must be lying. This, from a woman who now "frankly" doesn't "understand" how women think.
And by the way, that new quote of hers is damned sexist. She can't visualize how a woman could reason and analyze and come to a conclusion that the more conservative approach is better. She presents women — all women, apparently — as voting based on some kind of fuzzy, feel-y thinking about women, within which the only appeal of Romney is his wife.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.
Think about it, Ms. Albright.
ADDED: An emailer prompts me to see an alternative meaning in the phrase "why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney." Obviously, I thought she was saying that some women might find Ann Romney so appealing that they'd want to vote for Romney. But now I see the ambiguity in those words. It can also mean that the only woman who'd want to vote for Mitt Romney is his wife. I think that is probably is what she meant. Actually, the whole quote is a mess (except for her one obviously true statement, which she herself flags as obvious: she's "a card-carrying Democrat").
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
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