1) Did a postmodernist run over your dog or something, miker?
Even if so, that's hardly something that supports your
trashing of the entire educational system out of some
intolerant ideological pique. Each spring & fall I end up
with over a hundred students in the various college classes
that I teach, & about 95% of them DO NOT think that
morality, as you seem to put it, is an entirely
personal/relative idea. The vast majority of them have
figured out somehow that it's nobody's moral business who
they become intimate with or what (if any) entity they
worship, but it's unacceptable to go out & shoot people.
Unless you're going to war, that is. Or unless the person's
killed someone else. No, wait-- that's moral relativism,
isn't it?
2) And by the way--isn't "noir" all about personal moralities
& such things? The existential turn, & all that? How
do you characterize the Op as a sympathetic creation, for
example, without mr?
3) And finally, re "Cask": Students seem to have been trained
by their high-school teachers to view narrators as
essentially reliable, as these narrators are the sources for
the tales they tell. In my experience, most students
interchange the words
"narrator" & "author" without noticing what they're
doing, & think subconsciously that narrators are neutral
figures that should always be believed & trusted, instead
of realizing that they are merely creatures manufactured by
writers to express a point of view that isn't always viable
or in tune with some standard. (And yes, there's some
relativism there in that last sentence, but it's writerly,
not readerly, & its implications are not nearly as
dramatic or as evil-seeming as your flaming hyperbole wishes
to suggest. Straw men are for cornfields, Johnny
Storm.)
--- Michael Robison <
miker_zspider@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Frederick Zackel wrote:
>
> And 90% of the students don't get it: because he
is
> the only narrator, they sympathize with
Montressor.
> Fortunado MUST HAVE REALLY DESERVED TO BE WALLED
UP,
> else why would anybody wall the guy up?
>
> *************
> I'd say that you are the one that doesn't get
it.
> The
> reason they sympathize with Montressor is that
they
> have been taught that morality is simply a
personal
> opinion, and that making moral judgements is
a
> prejudicial act best avoided. Criminals
become
> victims. Terrorist become freedom fighters.
By
> spoon-feeding them this thin gruel of
postmodern
> pablum, this is the impasse that academia
have
> brought
> to education.
>
> miker
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