Sunday, August 31, 2008

Week of August 29

After recalling all the characters in the previous works we have discussed in class, the one that exemplifies best the differences between Modernism and Postmodernism is Rudy. The main difference between the two themes is that the idea of Modernism contains the belief that there is an absolute truth to everything; and that through rationalism and logic everything can be understood. While in Postmodernism, there is no absolute truth, things are left up to interpretation as a result of rationalism and logic. As in relation to the story, Yolanda interprets Rudy to be a person that has only one thing on his mind, sex! In the story she mentions, "it was physically painful for guys not to have sex." So after thinking about him and rationalizing, she concludes that he only wants to have sex with her. While if she had only looked at if from a different point of view and maybe analyzed his culture and the content of his past, she might have came to a different conclusion. That his culture made him do the things he did and say the things he said. In class we discussed how it was the cultural differences that posed the biggest problems between Yolanda and Rudy. The fact that he even said, "I thought you'd be hot-blooded, being Spanish and all, and that under all the Catholic bullshit, you'd be really free," lets you know they come from different backgrounds. In class we related to Rudy through a Postmodernism viewpoint. This was evident simply because of the fact that there were different opinions in the class of what type of person he was and why he was like that.

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