My Self-Reflection

My revision was actually something I really enjoyed writing.  This paper allowed me to take views of mine from pervious papers and combine them into something that I believe really helped me to express myself.  I combined my first paper “Reading as a Refuge” which was a paper that expressed my personal connection with reading with my fourth paper “New is Not Always Improved” which was a paper that discussed how I believe that online texts are not legitimate pieces of literature.  In “New is Not Always Improved” I used only Birkerts’ views as to why online texts are not legitimate but I did not really have an outlet for my own views as to why they are not legitimate.  Combining my first and fourth papers allowed me to express my own views as to why online text are not legitimate and for me that main reason is because they provide no refuge, no alternate world for the reader to immerse themselves in.

I believe this final project has allowed me to revise both “Reading as a Refuge” and “New is Not Always Improved” in the sense that I got to connect and elaborate on both of these ideas in ways that I could not do when originally writing the papers.  Since this piece for me was especially personal, I believe that it helped me to grow as a writer in a way that the previous papers have not.  I was given an outlet to express my personal opinions and I really enjoyed being able to do this.  Since I was writing a paper that I enjoyed, I was able to spend time on it and really get my thoughts out there in a way that I find to be efficient.

Though I feel I have grown as a writer this year, I still feel that there is much more room for improvement.  I know that I still have a problem with transferring my thoughts from my head in a way that I understand them to my projects so that others can effectively understand them as well.  I also believe that I still need work with my writing grammatically in the sense that I am aware that I abuse semicolons and this sometimes causes me to have lengthy, run-on sentences.  I do believe though that my growth in this class has been substantial and I have appreciated this opportunity.

New is Not Always Improved

Most children throughout the world have heard the tale of “Little Red Riding Hood.”  This tale has been passed amongst many generations and in order to span these generations, the fable has been transformed so that it is identifiable with the different audiences of each time period. These transformations have brought about versions of the classic tale that vary in violence, morality, and sexuality.  The variance of this long-standing fable has been taken to new heights as it has now been transformed into an electronic media.  I did not at first think that the transformation of “Little Red Riding Hood” from book to the computerized form found on the internet today would make a profound difference; I, however, was very wrong.  The hypertext “Red Riding Hood” that I have discovered on the internet has distorted the original texts of “Little Red Riding Hood” to something that is no longer a legitimate text at all.   In order for a text to be legitimate, it must communicate a message or fact, have a linear or obvious sequence, and require active engagement of the reader; the hypertext “Red Riding Hood” is lacking all of these elements.

The original tale of “Little Red Riding Hood” communicates the message that young girls should be wary of suitors for they may be interested in them for inappropriate, strictly sexual reasons.  Over time, however, the message became that children should be wary of talking to strangers as it may turn into a dangerous situation.  Neither of these messages is communicated in the electronic text of “Red Riding Hood,” however, because this is a feminist version of “Little Red Riding Hood.”  Feminists believe that the original versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” are degrading to woman because the young girl in the tale is made to seem inadequate to men because she is eaten by the wolf, which is seen to represent the sexual consumption of a woman by a male, and because she cannot escape the wolf without the help of the huntsman.  In many feminist versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” the girl overcomes the wolf without any help from a man thus proving her strength as a woman.  Even with the knowledge of the feminist view, I could depict no plausible meaning or message from “Red Riding Hood” due to the fact that there are no words written or spoken to explain the ambiguous and confusing scenes.  One example of ambiguity in the hypertext is that the tale has many possible different endings do to the fact that the reader has different pathways that can be chosen throughout the hypertext.  One of the many possible endings of the tale portrays Red (the author’s nickname for Little Red Riding Hood) in the bed of her grandmother with, if the viewer scrolls the mouse over her stomach, a creature that looks like the wolf inside of her.  I use the word creature because it is not clear if the thing inside of her is the wolf himself because she has eaten him or if it is the wolf’s offspring because he has consumed her sexually.  In interpreting feminist views and the sexual connotations of the hypertext, either option can be found extraordinarily plausible which further distorts any interpretable meaning that could have been found.  Meaning of a tale is highly derived from the ending; “Red Riding Hood” has many possible endings, each as ambiguous as the next.

The ending is not the only place where the viewer chooses Red’s path, there are multiple times where the reader must make a choice as to where Red will go or what will happen in her dreams if the viewer has previously chosen to take that pathway.  These choices do not ever lead to a logical story; they instead take the viewer through a maze of bizarre, non-sequential images which appear in a random order every time the hypertext is viewed.  After observing this hypertext, a viewer may be almost dumb-founded as to what exactly they have witnessed.  “The order of print is linear” and this hypertext is anything but linear and therefore it is not a legitimate text (Birkerts 122).  Legitimate text is something that is already written, something that is concrete, something that passes from author to reader (Birkerts, 122).  If the viewer of the text is constantly choosing the direction that the story takes, as does the viewer of “Red Riding Hood,” then essentially he or she has become the author.  If one is the author of the same text that they are viewing, the text cannot be considered concrete because the path of the text is perpetually being altered and thus the text in a unique order each time.  The fact that the images are in a new order each time the hypertext is viewed makes it impossible for the viewer to find a sequential order in which to process them.  Despite the fact that this hypertext has no words, if it was at least in a sequential order it would be much easier to depict meaning because then the viewer would know in what order they are supposed to interpret the images.  In “Red Riding Hood,” “linear sequentiality…[is]…sacrificed” and with the sacrifice comes another: the sacrifice of an interpretable meaning (Birkerts 122).

As previously mentioned, throughout “Red Riding Hood,” the viewer is forced to click on different images or options in order for the story to proceed.  Some may argue that because the viewer must click for the story to progress, the viewer is actively engaged.  I, however, disagree.  In order for a viewer to be actively engaged he or she must be actively thinking and translating “symbols…into their verbal referents… [which are]…in turn interpreted” (Birkerts 122).  Thus, for one to be immersed or engaged in a text one must first be able to comprehend the symbols that the text presents.  Because the “symbols” of “Red Riding Hood” are ever-changing and ambiguous, active engagement as previously defined is impossible because the viewer can never make the transition from symbols to verbal reference and thus cannot interpret the text.  This transition is further hindered by the fact that because “Red Riding Hood” is a hypertext, you cannot go backwards.  In “Red Riding Hood” there is no stop or pause option, there is no rewind; once a scene has played it is impossible to return to the scene without restarting the entire text.  In a legitimate text “the pace of reading is variable, with progress determined by the reader’s focus and comprehension” (Birkerts 122).  In “Red Riding Hood” the scene will continue whether you are actually paying attention or not.  It is true that the next scene will not begin without your cue but just because that cue is given, does not mean that the previous scenes have been comprehended.  There were multiple times in my reading of the text when I only proceeded to the next scene in hopes that it would reveal the meaning of the text; there were also times when I only proceeded because there was no other option.

Mankind’s constant thirst for knowledge and technological advancement has placed our species in an eternally changing world, but is advancement always positive?  “Transitions like the one from print to electronic media do not take place without…reweaving the entire social and cultural web” and this sort of reweaving is anything but positive.  Through this transition mankind is losing legitimate pieces of text that once lost, may never be retrieved.    These pieces are important both in our past and in our future, for they are what keep us tied to the material world.  How far will technology go before all materiality is lost?

The Refuge of Reading

Reading is an activity that dates back to the beginning of man’s time on Earth, when the cavemen would depict pictures on stone in order to communicate their ideas to each other and even to later generations.  Communication is only one of the immeasurable purposes that reading can serve.  Reading may also be used for building knowledge, practical application, for understanding, and so on.  I find that the best purpose for reading, however, is to find an alternate world or a place of refuge.  In The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts seems to agree with me, saying that when he was younger books for him were “an ‘other’ place away from my immediate surroundings” (Birkerts 35).  Later in his writings though, he discusses how he now reads to “appreciate illusions, savor subtleties of expression and thematic ambiguities” (Birkerts 45).  Unlike Birkerts, who for the most part believes that this change is for the better, I believe that reading should always be used as a tool of escape; this view of mine was shaped by my reading as a small child, my discovery of Megan McCafferty and Jessica Darling, and my readings of the Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling.

When I was a child, almost every summer my mother would take my sister and me to the library to join the “Sneaks” summer reading program.  This program did not entail much, but my mother pushed my sister and me to read at least one book a week.  At first I was resistant to this reading; I wanted to play outside in my imaginary land that only a young child could create.  Soon though, I discovered that I could be just as imaginative if not more so, in the land of literature.  My favorite books were the books of the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine, which were exciting tales of aliens, mummies, and the like; these books proved to be my greatest escape as a child.  You may not think that a child needs much of an escape because they are so young and carefree, but when I was a child my family was plagued with cancer; both my grandmother and my mother suffered from the disease within the time that I was in elementary school.  While other children could still easily make their own imaginative lands right out of their heads, my imagination was drowning in images of hospitals, doctors and death. Goosebumps for me was almost like a template, something I could use to re-create the imagination that, in those days, for me was hard to find.  This time for me was the time that “my sense of books as a refuge” developed the most; this sense is identical to the way Birkerts originally felt towards books (Birkerts 35).              

I was in about eighth grade when I discovered the book Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty.  This was a book about a young high school girl who was surprisingly sarcastic and somewhat of an outsider; in other words, in my mind at least, she was a mirror image of me.  In all of my experiences of reading, I had and still have not ever felt a stronger connection with any character.  The character of Jessica Darling was my written twin and as I followed her through crushes, first kisses and school rumors, I grew closer and closer to her.  Luckily for me, there were four succeeding books so I have gotten to grow up most of my life with a character that I can identify with more than I can with most real people that I have ever met.  Megan McCafferty changed my view of books forever, not only do I love books more, but I now know that there are characters in literature with whom I can truly identify.  Despite the fact that this series was so similar to my life, it still proved useful as a place of refuge.  For the time that I was immersed in these books, I would completely forget about my own life in which there was constantly hurtful rumors and drama circulating, which was the typical life of any adolescent girl.  These novels though served an extra purpose because when I was finished I could compare my life with Jessica’s and sometimes even help myself through the common problems and hurtful situations any adolescent girl is faced with daily.

There is also another series that deeply affected my life, one which proved to be the biggest escape from the real world that I have ever found: the Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling.  I am well aware that this series has no real literary merit, but I do not believe that literary merit is what defines a book as excellent or otherwise.  I first began to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when I was in second grade and I was immediately entranced by the magic and the witty characters; however, like most elementary students I stopped reading the books as they became too heavy for me to carry.  Looking back I do not regret this decision because I know now that I did not truly appreciate the books for what they were; if I had kept reading them then, I may not have developed the deep connection that I have with the series today.  I began reading Harry Potter again when I was beginning high school, which for me was an immense adjustment.  I had been separated from many friends that I had been with since kindergarten and thrown into a new place with new teachers, a new layout and a new schedule; I needed very much to escape from the real world.  What better way to escape from the real world than to turn to an imaginative world of witchcraft and wizardry?  In my opinion, there is none; I still can get so caught up in those books that I dream about magic for nights.

When I read books, I read them as Birkerts once did, with “body and soul, living vicariously;” not as he reads now “with only one part of the self” (Birkerts 37). I absolutely prefer my method of reading; it allows me to leave the world and my problems behind, if only even for a few minutes, and fully submerge myself into the many different worlds of literature.  Be it zombies and ghouls, potions and wizards, or even the realistic life of Jessica Darling; as long as it is not my own life, it allows me to escape.  Birkerts now reads to “grasp the fine points of technique and heed the structural signs,” but I wonder what exactly the point of this is (Birkerts 45).  Is it so that you can sit there and just be proud of yourself that you understand how the author writes?  I find this way of reading to be over-analytical and stressful.  Books to me are stress relievers, the escape that they provide is immeasurable and I would not have it any other way.

Where is the refuge of the modern world?

Reading is an activity that dates back to the beginning of man’s time on Earth, when the cavemen would depict pictures on stone in order to communicate their ideas to each other and even to later generations.  Communication is only one of the immeasurable purposes that reading can serve.  Reading may also be used for building knowledge, practical application, for entertainment, and so on.  I find that the best purpose for reading, however, is to find an alternate world or a place of refuge in which to escape from the real world around us.  In The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts seems to agree with me, saying that when he was younger books for him were “an ‘other’ place away from my immediate surroundings” (Birkerts 35).  Later in his writings though, he discusses how he now reads to “appreciate illusions, savor subtleties of expression and thematic ambiguities” (Birkerts 45).  Unlike Birkerts, who for the most part believes that this change is for the better, I believe that reading should always be used as a tool of escape.

Using reading as an escape, however, has become more and more difficult as our society has shifted “from the patterns and habits of the printed page…[to]…a new world distinguished by its reliance on electronic communications” (Birkerts 118).  This shift has irrevocably changed not only the way that printed books are viewed but also the way in which they are read.  Because any knowledge imaginable can be found on the internet in a short-hand, tightly summarized version, people are taking the “easy way out” and either foregoing the reading process partially by only skimming for information or foregoing the process entirely.  This new method of reading has completely destroyed any possibility of newer generations reading for a refuge because why in this fast paced world would they read something that can be found summarized on the internet?  Even younger generations are now being taught to find information on the internet; this is especially problematic because without the initial introduction to the printed page, how will children know the glories and benefits that it holds?  Without this knowledge, children and therefore succeeding generations will never know the refuge of reading.  It may already be obvious but to make it clear, yes, I am implying that no refuge can be found in the reading of online texts.  Online texts are perpetually changing, the pace is uncontrollable, and deciphering meaning from them proves to be difficulty; because of these aspects of online texts, especially the online text “Red Riding Hood,” online texts are not now and will not ever be capable of providing the refuge that printed texts can.

Printed texts, which from here on out will be referred to as books (yes I know “books” are online, I do not however consider them genuine books), are already written.  The pages are concrete objects that you can hold and the story that they portray cannot be changed.  Online texts, however, are quite the opposite.  In online texts such as “Red Riding Hood,” the reader is presented with many decisions to make in regard to what path the text will take.  Each of these decisions affects the order of the tale and eventually the message that it portrays.  One significant choice of the tale is when Red (the author’s nickname for Little Red Riding Hood) falls asleep in the flowers on the way to her Grandmother’s house; the reader must chose either to let Red sleep and dream or to wake her up.  If Red is made to wake up, she continues on to her Grandmother’s house where she eventually meets the wolf and some form of what I can only assume to be the huntsman.  On the other hand, if Red is allowed to sleep, you are taken through her strange dreamland which is a plethora of bizarre and non-sequential images.  Regardless of the path that is taken, the text changes with each decision that is made.  “The order of print is linear” and this hypertext and many others are anything but linear; links and a variety of choices throughout these texts distort any linearity that may possible be present (Birkerts 122).  Linearity is one of the main aspects of text that allows the reader to be taken away out of his or her surroundings.  Linearity allows the reader to follow a text almost blindly as he or she imagines the alternate world that is being presented; it is this alternate world that is serving as a place of refuge.  If a reader is forced to make decisions about where their path of reading is going then essentially he or she has become the author and because of this cannot be swept away by the text.

Another aspect that is of utmost importance in being able to use reading as a refuge is pace.  “The pace of reading is variable, with the progress determined by the reader’s focus and comprehension” (Birkerts 122).  Conversely in online texts like “Red Riding Hood,” “the pace is rapid, driven by the jump-cut increments” and not controlled in the slightest by the reader (Birkerts 122).   In “Red Riding Hood” there is no stop or pause option, there is no rewind; once a scene has played it is impossible to return to the scene without restarting the entire text.  This can cause a variety of problems in comprehension.  In order for one to use reading as a refuge, the reading must be completely understood.  In “Red Riding Hood” this is nearly impossible because the scene will continue at its own predetermined pace whether the viewer has comprehended it completely it or not.  It is true that the next scene will not begin without your cue but just because that cue is given, does not mean that the previous scenes have been comprehended.  Without full comprehension of a text, a connection between text and reader is difficult to form.   I find the connection that I made to the Meagan McCafferty book Sloppy Firsts to be one of the strongest connections that I have ever made with a book.   This was a book about a young high school girl who was surprisingly sarcastic and somewhat of an outsider; in other words, in my mind at least, she was a mirror image of me.  In all of my experiences of reading, I had and still have not ever felt a stronger connection with any character.  The character of Jessica Darling was my written twin and as I followed her through crushes, first kisses and school rumors, I grew closer and closer to her.  Luckily for me, there were four succeeding books so I have gotten to grow up most of my life with a character that I can identify with more than I can with most real people that I have ever met.  Megan McCafferty changed my view of books forever, not only do I love books more, but I now know that there are characters in literature with whom I can truly identify.  Without having been able to first comprehend Jessica’s story however, there would have been no way that I could have ever forged such a strong connection with her.  If I had been forced through this book like I would have been an online text, I would have never been able to understand her wide vocabulary and witty language.  Me being allowed to set my own pace and re-read paragraphs or even whole pages if I needed allowed me to understand the book and thus make a connection to the characters.  This connection is what allowed me to become immersed in this book thus using it as a refuge from the real world.

As previously discussed, as Birkerts grew older, his style of reading changed and he now reads to “grasp the fine points of technique and heed the structural signs” (Birkerts 45).  I believe that this is the type of reading that is necessary in order to decipher meaning from online texts and I also believe that this type of reading is over-analytical and stressful.  This type of reading is not capable of proving refuge because if one is expending all of their time trying to decipher and analyze the meaning of the text then one cannot become immersed in the book and taken away by their imagination.  Throughout my entire life, books have helped to take me away from the real world and into the fictional land that only books can create; this proved to be especially true for me when I was a child.  When I was a child, my favorite books were the books of the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine, which were exciting tales of aliens, mummies, and the like; these books proved to be my greatest escape as a child.  You may not think that a child needs much of an escape because a child’s life is so carefree, but when I was a child my family was plagued with cancer; both my grandmother and my mother suffered from the disease within the time that I was in elementary school.  While other children could still easily make their own imaginative lands right out of their heads, my imagination was drowning in images of hospitals, doctors and death. Goosebumps for me was almost like a template, something I could use to re-create the imagination that, in those days, for me was hard to find.  This time for me was the time that “my sense of books as a refuge” developed the most; this sense is identical to the way Birkerts originally felt towards books (Birkerts 35).

Mankind’s constant thirst for knowledge and technological advancement has placed our species in an eternally changing world, but is advancement always positive?  “Transitions like the one from print to electronic media do not take place without rippling or, more likely, reweaving the entire social and cultural web” and this sort of reweaving is anything but positive (Birkerts 123).  This reweaving is already taken place within the way that Birkerts himself reads.  Birkerts once read with “body and soul, living vicariously;” and has admitted to now reading “with only one part of the self” (Birkerts 37).  I still read as Birkerts once did by throwing myself entirely into a book and becoming one with the fictional tales that it holds.  I absolutely prefer my method of reading; it allows me to leave the world and my problems behind, if only even for a few minutes, and fully submerge myself into the many different worlds of literature.  Birkerts now reads to “grasp the fine points of technique and heed the structural signs,” but I wonder what exactly the point of this is (Birkerts 45).  This type of reading is stressful and in my mind pointless, I do not really care how a book was put together grammatically I just care about the story it holds.  When reading online, I feel like you have to pick the story apart as Birkerts now tends to do with books in order to gain any meaning and in this process, the story itself may be lost.  Online texts are much more difficult to decipher meaning from due to the fact that they are perpetually changing and have a predetermined pace.  This difficulty does not allow one to find refuge and because of this I am caused to wonder, why is our society letting books be replaced by this online material?  The answer to that question is one that I may never fully come to grasp.