hum331tubasahin:

The clock sounds “tick tock” and the heart sounds “boom boom”. Then the pile of clocks finishes and silence comes. Boom boom finishes and silence comes. But we connect the heart with machine and we create a sound for silence which is a sound of “dıııııııııııııııııttttt” Is the sound of…

Stucking in the moment in the darkness and no sound of course. Your example can be thought as an individual apocalypse I myself lived that moment I know you did too:) . The dreams as I believe sometimes tell much. it also reminded me Funes in Borges short story he is in a situation like this laying on a bed and remembering. Your dream frigthened me much I hope I never live this moment or even dream. This is all from me now as you know I caught a flue:((

Is there has to be an end? Or do we have to believe it and Make plans? My question about end and our obsession about it creating scenarios while all of us will have our ends. I am wondering while we are making claims do we really believe it ? Or if we do not then why do we wonder about such scenarios?

Tuba your kite example impressed me much, I have never fly a kite. But your example is quite right, we have a life that might flow from our hands. I wonder whether your brother, Yahya:), would miss the rope of the kite, if your father did not tell him to hold it strongly. We sometimes hold on the life so strongly that the rope of it just flows from our hands, or we hold the rope so loosely that it has already flown. Maybe we look for the lost kites with our poetries and novels, we might call the kites as hopes in this case. In order for us to hold on this life we need some kites, it can be persons too, yes actually persons are best example, and when we face the threat that we lose them we resort to our poetries we search the help.. 

hum331tubasahin:

In your cell, take a pencil and write it down your loneliness to meet in the “communion” cell. Fiction and poetry enables us to meet in another cells. Someone’s life and his or her internal even external world is fiction for me and I can just reach there by imagination. If someone says science…

Surprisingly this week I will not focus the end of Zone One instead I want to focus the existence issue as Mark Spitz says “I was here, I am here now, I have existed I exist still.” p. 246. How someone can prove his/her existence, with the sound or touch or vision? How many people are aware of your existence? I mean how many people in a day just pass nearby you and notice you. Mark Spitz is kind of a person that we all see but do not care, what we care just names as for the hundred times someone asks him why they call you Mark Spitz. Whether the names story is the fact that Mark Spitz does not know how to swim but the very end he says he has to learn swim sometime. So he jump the sea of death, we have a real story now.  “The city did not care for your story, the particular narrative of your reinvention; it took them all in, every immigrant in their homeland, the number of coins in their pockets….No matter the hue of their skins, dark or light, no matter the names of their gods or the absences they countenanced, they had all strived, struggled, and loved in their small, human fashion.” (Whitehead, p. 243). Now we can see the point is not a fiction at all, it is a fact, a fact that all living creatures will taste the death, the mortality issue. We have big differences but we are not different from each other, birth and death. “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.” Hamlet, 4.3,  Shakespeare or as Kermode indicates “Death is a word which presents no real target to mind’s eye.” p. 161.

                 The difference is how we live this life, how we perceive it as Nietzsche says “Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age.” Whichmight be interpreted for two; individual and civilization. We can see it in Zone One you will have the same end time with your civilization in somehow or all the individuals in the civilization have the same right age for death. I am sure we all felt at least once how this life is meaningless and monotone . What I mean maybe can be told with the words of famous speech of Hamlet “There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.” Hamlet, 3.1, Shakespeare.

Sıla your title Escape from reality reminded me the play of Macbeth. (I have to warn it includes spoiler, if you have not read Macbeth yet.)In this play Lady Macbeth tried to escape from reality, the fact that she is a murderer, so reality catches herself in her dream which causes sleepwalking. For the Macbeth, he also tried to escape from reality with his imagination, but his conscious played with him like a cat playing with a mouse. (Spoiler finishesJ) As you said if we make choices that we can see its results, the life would be linear and boring. I think we are all ships that swim in this biggest ocean sometimes we direct the ship but sometimes the wind does. But what makes us, us is our choices and decisions. And as you said we are responsible for our actions and decisions. And finally about the Children of men and The Road, you are right; I could not notice the similarity. But they are really similar, in both ends the fire, the hope were alive but the carrier was gone.  

hum331silaozdemir:

“How good it would be, if one could find in life the simplicity inherent in narrative order.”

“The Sense of An Ending” p.127

Being independent from transition state in life that causes the real chaos and having a simple life with the beginning, the middle and the end are envied things….

““I’ll say one thing about the world today, it really keeps the pounds off,” she said.

“Starvation will do that.”

“I think it was all running. I haven’t been in this kind of shape since college.”. She brought up Buffalo. Mim still believed in Buffalo.

“By the time you hear about a place, it’s gone,” Mark Spitz said. “I think the very act of hearing about a place seems to will its disappearance.”

“This place is different. Someplace has to be.” His head was on her stomach. Her fingertips drew letters on his scalp. Words? A name? Her kids’ names? “Or else we should just end it now.”

“Buffalo.”

“If there’s nothing out there, what’s the point?”

“There’s here.”

“Have to keep on moving, honey. You stay in one spot, you’re just another straggler.”” (Zone One, p.198).

In this case I am very on side of Mark Spitz, especially when he says by the time you hear about a place, it’s gone. How can such a place be possible or if it is possible then why apocalypse ? In Children Of Men we have same issue looking for a different, safe, hope, usual place in an apocalypse. Although in the movie the tomorrow ship came, we all know that most of the apocalyptic movies ends with a religious message or happily end. For this movie the issue was different, the message given by the minister (the man that Theo wanted help) “don’t think about that.” is the answer of why some of us still believe an utopia and straggling and why some of us just live the moment. Utopia or reality, the question should be why we believe presence of such a place for an apocalypse. We might be in the denial stage, if we really believe it is an apocalypse, we also know that there would not be such a place. But the human beings still need such a hope or we stay in one spot as stragglers.

“But there is in practice this difference between the novelist and the young man as Sartre sees him: the young man will always be free in just this degree; whether he stays with his mother or not, his decision will not be relevant to his next decision. But the novelist is not like that; he is more Thomist than Sartrean, and every choice will limit the next he has to collaborate with his novel; he grows in bad faith.”(Kermode, p.141)

             I can see his point but I cannot see any difference between a novelist and myself in terms of a decision making process. Of course,    I am free while I am making my decisions but the novelist may change his mind and write the story from the beginning which I can never do. But it is very true for both that every decision affects the one comes after it; the life is just made out by decisions and choices. I might say the world is a novel of the god and we have our own novels, both of us write some fate. The difference is we do not know the end but the novel consists of contribution, we have free will and a fate which the very end is in the beginning (in this case I talk about my personal ideas, since I believe in fate). The question is; would anything change if we know our ends?

“Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age.”                                                                  Nietzsche 

“No matter how hard we try I don’t think we can change the fact that we will perceive our time different and more special than others and combine all the clues we had from the past to conclude how our end will come” (Gülperi) I like your sentence it is very true, it is what I think from the beginning o the course too. As you said I never guessed where I am now and how I changed. Even now, I cannot imagine myself doing PhD, or with a child and married or working at a clinic or living in another city. When I have such ideas I close my eyes and imagine. The best way for me when in the sea going deep and thinking not to go out again or looking at the sky in the swing. Although we have some ideas we never know about our future, for example I do not know whether I will sleep well or dream tonight. As I said before we are obsessed with the unknown future, so we focus more apocalypse.

hum331gulperiyalcin:

I am not sure if we are leading towards a conclusion with our discussions and here we are again thinking of the concept of apocalypse from another perspective. We said people are focused on ends but what sort of ends they are expecting and how they classify or perceive it changes in many ways….

                   I want to clarify that what I mean by straggler is not just the ones in the novel but also more philosophically, I mean stuck in the past, thinking but not acting, words but no deeds, heart beating but not hope, makes us straggler. For Mark Spitz we cannot really say that whether he is a straggler or skel or none. Because although he seems to be stuck in the past and obsessive about it, he still acts for the future. And also I do not think that stragglers wanted to voluntarily stuck, or maybe I missed that part since the novel is complicated and I couldn’t caught in it, sorry about that. You are right he is fighting, as all of us read through, but I think his biggest fight is with himself. While I am reading, I can hear the sound of slaps and inner thinking, introspection of him. Maybe this is what disturbs me with the novel. Also I think he has no aim to be important in the society. And we create memories, if we really want, we can get rid of them, I think Mark Spitz has a kind of illness which I cannot define, but of course we are talking about a post apocalyptic, so it is normal. 

hum331nihansoyoz:

Your idea that Mark Spitz is in effect not very different from stragglers is very interesting. I also think that Mark Spitz seems desperately stuck in the past. However, his fixation on the lost world seems to me quite involuntary, which in my opinion is what differentiates him from stragglers. Although on page 155, the narrator says “He was a ghost. A straggler.” to describe Mark Spitz’ sudden feelings of alienation and loss, he (Mark Spitz) quickly regains his composure and starts ruminating over what kind of a straggler he would make. If you remember, he thinks perhaps he would go back home. The key point is that he is not home. On the contrary, he is (sort of) part of the military, working as a sweeper to destroy all the skels. His flashbacks even reveal that he was promoted to that position after the success and bravery (at least as it seems to other people) he demonstrated during a skel attack when he was working as a wrecker. So Mark Spitz hasn’t actually given up and shut himself in his own world as stragglers (at least metaphorically) seem to have done. He’s out there and fighting, and perhaps even on his way to become an important person in this new society. Still, his memories won’t leave him alone. I wonder if he actually likes obsessing over the similarities and differences between the two worlds. So far, I haven’t thought that he does. But he doesn’t really fight against these kinds of thoughts, either. 

hum331sumeyrayalcintas:

We are given now his name’s story, Mark Spitz could not swim. All these flashbacks reminded me it is said that when you are close to dead, in seconds to die, your life passes your eyes like a film ribbon. As we discussed Mark Spitz coldness in previous classes, I think he is dead, he breathes…

We are given now his name’s story, Mark Spitz could not swim. All these flashbacks reminded me it is said that when you are close to dead, in seconds to die, your life passes your eyes like a film ribbon. As we discussed Mark Spitz coldness in previous classes, I think he is dead, he breathes and acts but in fact he is no such big difference from stragglers or skels. “He was a ghost A straggler.” (p.155). He just could not decide which memory he should stuck in and does not eat ant human.

“Already those who speak of a clean break with the past, and a new start for the future, seem a little old-fashioned.” Kermode, p.102 so according to Kermode Mark Spitz is not old fashioned. What I think throughout the Zoneone is there are three kinds of creature, straggler, skels and people like Mark Spitz. Meaning of it might be some of us are stuck in somewhere, or in some memory, that we cannot move forward, we cannot do anything for our lives, we are even not noticed by others(“after a while we wouldn’t even notice them.” p.158) we just breathe like stragglers. Some of us make the hurt to others, we are eating each others, we enjoy with the blood like skels, and finally some of us kill all the others for a “better future”. But I think the novel more focuses on stragglers which is not simply mean the unmoving zombies.

“The stragglers lived eternally and undying in their personal heavens.” p.159. “The consciousness of the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” (Marx as cited in Kermode, p.121). maybe that is the way how we deal with an apocalypse, we just go back to the past and live there, we do not think about future. But we are given “future” word in the novel with representation of the kids. So maybe we can say that stragglers represent past, skels and survivors represent now, though it is always past tense, and finally kids represent future.

“There must be some good kids somewhere.”p.168. This perspective seems too optimistic, which reminded me the very first episode of the Walking Dead, in the first scene we are given a good sheriff, Rick, he saw a little girl, and tried to call her but then we faced that she was a walker, zombie, too. The story seems to say there is no hope.

         I also want to talk about the poet’s suffering, which Kermode talks its relation with politics too. What I know from Turkey, if a poet praises the politics, government, he is awarded with the name national poet but is he says something against them he is punished even with banishment. It is simple, very obvious. “Yeats was deeply committed to his idea of alienation…”p.106. What makes someone foreign to us? I think we decide it with looking at their thoughts, which is the biggest mistake.

hum331barisemrekaya:

When we use apocalypse term, it reminds us the end of the current system with repercussions like death of billions and a ruined world. Even though, we call it “the end”, the story of human kind goes on after it. However, why we are wondering about the world after it? Does it make sense to be…

Barış first of all ı love your title endception, it is really creative. About the hunger games I did not like it too, except the man’s beatiful beard! As you said we are really hungry about the ends So even having an end does not satisfy us we want to know end after end. It is again about the eternality concept. We as people never want ends of anything that we love think about the chocolate that you hold your hand I personally do not want its end, or more realistic perspective we even do not our animals life end, we think it belongs to us but when it dies we understand that it never belonged to us. I agree with you about the perfectness of fiction of The Road I did not think that the end is clear but now your comment gives its meaning. By the way I love the movie version of the road too, it is really good adaptation. Finally about the Zone One yes it resembles the Lost but I hope it does not end like Lost. As you said in Zone One there are two fictions, last night and end of Mark Spitz. Giving two fictions may Make the story good but I am not sure about the process. P.S. Sorry for spelling mistakes I am wrting from my smart! Phone.