What is the “fallacy of composition”? Give an example of how it works in your own life.
The “fallacy of composition” is defined in the book as “a mistaken belief that what seems good for an individual will still be good when others do the same thing. This can work in our daily lives through any hobby or talent that makes us unique as individuals. We feel that this thing is good for us, however if all of our peers started doing this same thing, it would lose it’s uniqueness and we would not feel that it is good anymore. One example could be collecting Pokemon cards. You strive to find that one rare card, but if your friend has that same card as you it loses its value to you.
Why have trunk lockings been on Weiss’ mind lately? Use examples of imagery from the essay to support your answer. What does Weiss learn? Use the definition of symbolism in your answer.
Weiss has seen many examples of trunk imprisonment in movies, books, and newspapers and is intrigued by it. He wants to know if there is a way to escape from a locked trunk. He uses imagery throughout his essay to show his fascination with the idea of being locked in a trunk. He says he “could only imagine bloodied fingers, cracked teeth.” He eventually learns that he may be able to manipulate certain cables and mechanisms inside the trunk to escape, but after all of his curiosity he finds that he does not wish to test his newfound theory after all. Being locked in a trunk is symbolic for any difficult situation we encounter in our lives. All you have to do is learn the assembly of the mechanism and you can find your way out of it. He uses a wedding as an analogy for this situation in the essay.
What is the effect produced by the switch to third person POV at the end of Scott Carrier’s essay? Why does he do it?
The change in the point of view at the end of this essay creates a suspenseful close. It leaves you asking yourself questions. You question the very nature of sanity after studying his many interviews. Finally at the very end of the essay you cannot help but wonder, after interviewing all of the individuals, has Carrier himself developed schizophrenia in the end.
What kind of an introduction is Sedaris using in “Full House”? What is the central idea of the essay? What does Sedaris want us to learn about him and us?
Sedaris’ introduction seems to be just a simple anecdote style after reading the first paragraph. However, after reading further into his sleep based introduction, it appears to be written in the style of mistaken impression. Sedaris wants us to learn not to bottle up our emotions and/or sexual urges because it can lead to extreme situations of discomfort and lead us to feel out of place. This is shown throughout the scene in Walt’s basement where the boy’s play strip poker. Sedaris’ homosexual urges lead him to feel uncomfortable at first but in the end it seems as though he has caused his friends to flee from him as he begins to dabble with the temptations of his sexuality.
Summary
Chapter five of Fast Food Nation takes place at J.R. Simplot Plant in Idaho. It tells us about a young boy named J.R. Simplot, who at the age of 16, opens his own potato farm. He grows to be very successful, becoming the largest potato shipper in the West. After continue his success through the sales of dried onions and potatoes in WWII, Simplot goes on to invest in the technology of frozen foods. The chapter closes with Simplot selling frozen french fries to Carl Karcher of McDonald’s.
Full House tells the story of a young boy who finds himself struggling with his own homosexual urges. He stays the night at a neighborhood boys house where nipple twisting and strip poker provoke a serious internal struggle. The boy finds himself requesting that the other boys do simple tasks for his own personal arousement. We gain insight on how bottling up personal sexual desires can cause an internal conflict in young people.
How to Get Out of a Locked Trunk is about Phillip Weiss’ desire to find out if there is a way to escape from a locked trunk. He seeks answers from many people and later finds that there may be a small possibility of escape, but decides not to test this theory he has searched so hard to find. He relates the situation to a wedding he attends later in the essay.
The Test is based on Carrier’s many interviews with individuals who suffer from schizophrenia. He asks them a series of questions and totals up their score at the end of each interview. He later asks himself these same questions but realizes he is not doing well and decides not to total up his score. At the end of the essay he tells us of how he would write a report on himself and the essay leaves us wondering if these interviews have indeed caused Carrier to develop schizophrenia himself.
4 comments:
1. I think the example of collecting Pokemon cards could work, but not as you explain it. After all, isn’t the value of any particular card based on how many there are – and not on how many people are searching for it? In fact, it seems that an increase in the number of people searching for a rare card increases that card’s value. So I don’t know about your example.
2. Yes, but why is he fascinated by trunk lockings now? Good example of imagery in the “cracked teeth” quote. What other imagery do we have in the essay? And what do you mean he uses the wedding as an analogy?
3. Why would Scott Carrier develop schizophrenia by administering the test? Maybe a better question is, why is Carrier doing this job in the first place?
4. Yes, I see the idea of a mistaken impression. But avoid searching for morals in any of the essays we read. Is Sedaris really trying to teach us something? Maybe. So what do we learn about Sedaris? Or better yet, what does Sedaris learn about himself? And in so doing, what do we learn about ourselves, about people?
As far as the summaries go, you are being too specific. Summaries generalize and don’t often give specific details from the text. The aim is to give the reader an understanding of the overall idea, and there are places here where you’re not getting at that. For example, you don’t even mention the whole scent industry from Chapter 5, and you say that Weiss was “attending” a wedding in his essay. That’s a bizarre way to say that Weiss was getting married. More close reading.
1.Our defination of the fallacy of composition was slightly different from their's. It was "the mistake of assuming that what is true of an individual is true for the group as a whole. Our example was that people assume that if you go to public school you're not as smart or wealthy as people who go to private school.
2.We agree that trunk lockings were on his mind because he's seen it in movies but we didn't think it was because he was intrigued by it. We think he had a phobia of it, and doesn't understand why people don't discuss it in real life. We also agreed that the trunk is an analogy of his wedding. He's engaged, and he's scared of something so permanent that's not easy to get out of. At the end he did give up the opportunity to get out of his trunk because he trusts that he will be happy with his marriage.
3.The third person POV turns the interviewer into the patient. It examines his own problems and compares them to how similar they are the patients he interviewed. We agreed that it does this to make you question if he has schizophrenia, but it also shows he admits there is something wrong with him so he can solve it and try to convince his wife to come back.
4.We agreed that it seemed like an anecdote but after reading further you realise it's a mistaken impression. The idea of the essay is to show that you shouldn't hide who you are because it can make already awkward situations worse. He's nervous and anxious about the others discovering his sexuality, but after realising he could take control of the situation he got lost in his temptations. He went to far and we agree that the others got uncomfortable with him.
1. Our group also found the definition of fallacy of composition in the book to be "the mistaken belief that what is good for the individual is good for everyone," and defined in our own terms we said it's failure to see that what is good for an individual may have negative effects when done by a large number of people. One example Aliza came up with was the stock market-how brokers sell shares when their value is low. We can all see, however, that when a large number of people do this it is bad for the economy, bad for another large group of people. Basically, as Mr. Kizzier said, anything that people do to get ahead, any little shortcuts they take can be examples, because if everyone took them, we would all see the negative effects.
2. Our group, at first, thought of Group 3's response-that he had been thinking about getting out of a locked trunk simply because he noticed all the examples in books, movies, etc. But we actually thought that he had this topic on his mind because of the fact that he was about to be married. In his mind, marriage was akin to being in a locked trunk forever, and he wanted to make sure he knew how to escape. This is how Weiss uses symbolism in his essay. Being a married man is like being a prisoner, and figuring out a way to escape from the locked trunk is his way of feeling okay about it. HIs way of knowing that just in case he's unhappy he has some way to get out. By the end of the essay he isn't so obsessed with the scenario, and even shrugs off an opportunity to test out his trunk escaping skills. He even found that he liked it inside the "shallow and hot" trunk, and getting out wasn't as satisfying as he thought it would be. This is how he copes with the idea of marriage.
3.We sort of had a different train of thought for this question. We said that Carrier switched to third person because he was examining himself. He was so used to analyzing others that he failed to realize his own flaws, and the fact that he wasn't rightfully doing his job because of it. In the essay he only describes his encounters with patients in cold, hard descriptions. What he said, what the patient said, maybe some of his random thoughts like the slice of pizza on the carpet. He uses third person in the end to help the reader be able to analyze him as he analyzed his schizophrenic patients.
4.We pretty much agreed with group 3 here. Sedaris uses an anecdotal introduction with lots of detail, and of course, humor. We thought that the central idea was being different, which Sedaris links to being gay, and the uncomfortableness that goes along with it. He wants us to learn from his mistakes-he tries to be someone so different from his actual self that he often forgets he's trying to hide something, and ends up coming off even more obvious.
1. Our group defined The fallacy of composition as the mistaken idea that if everyone does the same thing, their station or situation improves. David offered an example of how this relates to his own life, stating that he bought a car so that he could drive to work. Now he drives to work to pay for the car. The car itself functions not only as a means of transport, but also as a status symbol. In this sense, he's now in competition with other people around him to have a better, faster, more capable car. The only people benefiting from this scenario are the car manufacturers and salespeople selling the car; not the people actually buying the car itself.
2. Our groups idea about this question was a little different than group 3's. We took the same approach as Tess' group, deciding that Weiss was using the locked trunk to symbolize marriage. Marriage was to Weiss a lifelong and binding commitment that will, in theory, last until his death. Our group noticed a lot of death imagery in the story, from the cemetery, where the picture is taken, to the references to Poe, and it is explicitly mentioned that his marriage is “till death”. Weiss uses the symbolism of cemeteries, movies dealing with death (Goodfellas, Thelma & Louise, etc), and the idea that there is a method of escape that is not always guaranteed to confront his unknown future and marriage. He learns that no situation can be completely mapped and planned for, be it a trunk-locking, or marriage, or death.
3. Our group felt a little differently about this question. We thought The switch to third person perspective was to allow the reader to disassociate themselves from Carrier. In time all of his "stressors" got to him and caused him to become a little crazy himself, so this was used to allow the readers to view him as we viewed the other “crazies” he described previously.Carrier chose to switch POV to start by showing the vast differences between two subjects, only to later pull back and show just how similar the subjects actually are gives the reader a much better sense of depth in the story.
4. Our group felt similar about this question. Sedaris is obviously gay, and has realized this throughout most of his life. His introduction is an anecdote which describes his family. It is clear by the end of the story that Sedaris is a quick thinker and an excellent manipulator; skills which help him fit in to a world that, in his youth, he may not yet be ready for.
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