PARVUM OPUS
Number 222
April 20, 2007
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CREATIVE WRITING
Cho Seung-Hui, the man who murdered all those people at Virginia Tech, was an English major. One of his teachers, the poet Nikki Giovanni, said he wasn't a good writer, wasn't really trying to write, and harassed the other students, so she had him removed from her class. How does a person like that get to graduate? His writing had no literary quality, which requires reflection. No one in his hideous plays gained any insight into himself or anyone else. The sadism, anger, revenge, and hate in his writing had no a satisfactory plot resolution. In the end, Cho committed evil greater than what he wrote about, whether or not his writing was based on past experience.
When I taught English composition, a few of my students wrote some very disturbing pieces. In those days, we hadn't lived through experiences of mass murders in schools, so I didn't worry about that then, but I wonder what happened to those students. They didn't necessarily turn out to be murderers. Most people who suffer as children do not. So abuse is not a cause of murder. Does chemical imbalance cause violence? Again, it's possible that the same chemistry would produce different results in different people, and I doubt if the research has been done, so that explanation is meaningless. Some people say people should have "reached out to him", but people did, starting with his mother, and he didn't want any part of them.
In the end, the man's actions tell us more about him than his writing or his history or his mental/chemical state. One blogger said the explanation is that he created a scenario and had the will to carry it out. His actions could not have been predicted from knowing his mental state, which many people did. Even with knowledge, there are legal constraints on what can be done with a person who hasn't yet committed a serious crime, although in this case, arson (Cho is said to have set a fire in a dormitory) should have been sufficient to lock this man up.
His actions could not have been prevented. So, what can one do? When I imagine myself in that situation, my view on gun control is that I want to be in control of one gun, mine.
Some observations on the political uses of murder:
Nikki Giovanni said this at the memorial convocation at Virginia Tech:
We do not understand this
tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in
Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away
to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant
watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican
child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in
the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own
hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one
deserves a tragedy.
When someone you love dies, it's not appropriate at the funeral to more or less say, "Too bad, but you're not the only one who's suffering."
Barack Obama compared the murders at Virginia Tech to the "verbal violence" of Don Imus. Ask the Rutgers girls if they'd just as soon be dead on the floor as be insulted by a media idiot. Obama continued about "the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country." Well, BO, I think I'd rather lose my job than be gunned down.
I do want to remember Professor Liviu Librescu, a 75-year-old Holocaust survivor, who died of gunshot wounds after blocking the door with his body while telling his students to get out. Despite his age, and undoubtedly because of his experience, this man reacted quickly, as if he wasn't surprised, as if he knew it was real. His was a heroic sacrifice. It's good to have heroes.
THOU SHALT NOT
Coincidentally, before the shootings, Sue S. sent this about last week's mention of murder vs. manslaughter:
You are
right about thou shalt not murder. I saw a 2 hour discussion on the ten
commandments last week and they made the comment about the different words for
killing. The culture at that time did sanction capital punishment and separated
murder from manslaughter linguistically. The commandment really meant murder.
If you committed manslaughter, the dead person's family had a right to stone
you to death ~ if they could find you I guess.
People ran to neighboring towns and hid out until everything calmed
down. Don't know about the statute of limitations on stoning.......
OK, let's go out on lighter notes. Mike Sykes wrote regarding VERmont vs. VerMONT:
Could it be the French
influence (real or imagined)? Apparently in correctly spoken French the stress
is on NO syllable, with the result that the recommendation is to speak French
as if it's (as little as possible) on the last, at least when speaking to a
Francophone. Curiously, Americans seem to do this amongst themselves (with
French borrowings) to a greater extent than the British, for example with
/valet/, which we say as VALlay, and, I think, /garage/, for which most Brits
say GARRarzhe, though some even say GARridge. So, what about /espionage/? We
normally say ESPionarzhe, though I once had an English teacher who asserted
that there were people who said esSPYunidge! I've never heard it.
And there can't be many Brits who know why Arkansas doesn't rhyme with Kansas.
I used to live in Kansas and thought both names came from the Kansa or Kaw Indians, although I read that Arkansas comes from the Quapaw Indian tribe.
Dan E. wrote on verbing nouns:
This is the second time
in a week that I have observed the word “task” used as a verb. I will continue
to “effort” such observations and let you know when I find them.
AKRON (April 11) -- ....Goodyear is not actively looking for a new headquarters location, according to Executive Vice President Joe Gingo, who said nonetheless he was tasked several months ago to look at the situation ....
I've written about this before, but I don't know how long this usage, "task" as a verb, has been extant. Not long enough for me to like it or feel comfortable with it, though.
The term "fourth estate" refers to the media, the first three (in England) being the lords, the commoners, and the clergy. Wikipedia notes an earlier meaning. In 1792, Henry Fielding (citing kings, lords, and commoners) called the fourth estate "the Mob" ~ which the Wikipedia author calls "the proletariat", the communist term for, uh, the mob.
Thomas Sowell wrote, "The Fourth Estate sometimes seems more like a Fifth Column." A Fifth Column is a traitorous group (the term dates from the Spanish Civil War).
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