When I first sat down to write this paper, I was writing about how free expression, held back by society, destroys any hope of progression. I came to the conclusion that the outcome will always be the same. One starts later and has a bigger bang when it happens, the other starts sooner and gradually increases over time as society adapts and evolves. It wasn't a bad paper, it just wasn't what I felt I was assigned to write. The problem is that I was asked to respond to an essay.

The question at hand is, first, what do I think Goodman is saying in her essay. “What do I think she's saying? She's saying to speak out. Even her last sentence is 'Say that you think.', how can you get any simpler?” That's how I think. I don't expand my ideas, I compress them. I summerize until I get all my views into as small of a statement as I can, usually quoting a line the author themselves stated with. After all, who's going to argue with a direct quote?

The second part to the question is reguarding how it effects the class. Before today, I had no idea. I always kept my views to myself to avoid conflict. I would think “Oh, I can suggest a topic on politics!”, but I would hold my tongue because I didn't want any (what I see as, anyway) crazy Republicans getting angry and me for not sharing the same view. I don't say that, because that would make the situation worse. Even with that bit of experience, that's how I was all the time, so that doesn't help me much with isolating it to the class.

But maybe it doesn't have to. Ooh, now I'm getting somewhere. In my English class today, we were to describe a girl in heels for the first time. My professor asked I describe to elaborate on how she looks “akward”. “Well, I don't know if I can say this or not...I don't want to offend anyone.” What am I afraid of, this girl is a product of my imagination.

“Just say it anyway.”

“Well, she looks like a dog walking on her hind feet, stumbling about.”

“Ooh, that's good!” a female classmate tells me.

What's the moral of the story? Don't hold back ideas that arn't blatently offensive. As long as you don't tell someone they look like a dog, you're fine. As long as you don't tell her boyfriend that his car seems to flatuate, nobody is going to cry or press charges.

Travis Stern

October 4th, 2005

4-5:05

Goodman Response

2005-10-05T00:18:10