To what extent does this statement reflect your understanding of politics in After the Bomb?
Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this.
A bright flash, and the world was changed forever. As the 1945 mushroom cloud ballooned over Hiroshima city, traditional global values regarding the common pursuit of man were dashed away forever and replaced by a pervading distrust, paranoia and existentialism.
Great work mentioning the new ways of thinking here! Responding to this shift in global consciousness, composers of the era developed the popular perception of the atomic bomb as marking the failure of the grand human narrative, and further reflected the resulting disempowerment. The characteristic political compliance before the bomb is challenged through subversion of literary conventions in Samuel Beckett’s 1953 absurdist play Waiting for Godot, and Stanley Kubrick's film Dr Strangelove (1964) reflecting the growing abandonment of tradition. The resulting isolation and disintegration of trust led to a culture of self distraction through material possession, a concept critiqued as an internal threat by Sylvia Plath’s poetic anthology Ariel and Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise. Through satirical representations of common post war rationales, these composers seek to reveal the ramifications of complacency as spreading internal threats, highlighting the greater enemy within the human psyche.
You've really ticked all of the boxes here! Ways of thinking post bomb, ways of thinking pre-bomb, context, key players, texts, and answering the question!The dropping of the bomb saw increasing isolation due to the replacement of enlightenment thinking with existentialist doubt in the human endeavour, leading to distrust in authority.
This is great, but if you could angle it more to imply that there is an enemy, as the essay question wants, you'll be attacking it with more direction and the marker will be more alert to your effort.Beckett represents these paradigms throughout Waiting for Godot with the intention of exposing “the instability of every apparently solid structure.” (Worton) Emblematic of the eras increasing nihilism and rejection of authoritative trust, Beckett absurdly depicts the “bad faith” philosophies of Sartre through the darkly humourous protagonists, in their pursual of false or unfulfilling external answers to their purpose. “Terrified by (their) own emptiness” (J. Moore) they futilely put complete faith in the omniscient, controlling and metaphorical ‘Godot’. Through religious allusion, Beckett allegorically highlights the emerging disillusionment following the failure of authority, religion and science to protect humanity. Further, the disturbance to social structure and resultant dysfunction is further evident through the rejection of language conventions in the absurdist genre, including the fragmented syntax and useless repertoire in the dialogue “Nothing to be done.” Beckett uses the motif to capture the contextual paralysis and loss of hope. Beckett further criticises absolute trust in authority through the desensitised reactions of characters to inhumanity in the satirically childlike connotations of “We could play at Pozzo and Lucky.” The composer uses this metaphor for propaganda to question ‘truths’ regarding Communism as evil and Capitalism as righteous. The failure of the Christian metanarrative is most poignant through Beckett’s subversion of Christian grace and suffering ideologies. Through parenthesis and truncated sentences, the composer creates a poignant tone, revealing the extent of disempowerment “To every man his little cross. Till he dies. (Afterthought) And is forgotten.” Therefore, through absurd representation, Beckett reveals the contextual loss of hope and purpose following the failure of the human metanarrative, and questions the prevalent trust in authority.
This is flawless in terms of tackling the ways of thinking, relating it to the text, the composer's purpose and the techniques at play. What is lacking is a direct CLEAR link to the question. If i use my imagination I can open my eyes to ways that you are relating to this really well, but I have to really think about it. A clear identification of your thought process at the start of the paragraph would guide the paragraph further, but I think it needs to be weaved throughout a bit more. The idea of "enemies" is difficult - but you could make religion or politics the enemy!Following conventional post bomb coping attempts, Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr Strangelove employs satire and black humour to express contextual disillusionment in authority and breakdown of logic, following the failure of supposed safeguards. The film plays on the audience’s contextual hyper-anxieties to reveal the flaws of total trust in authoritative bodies, alluding to McCarthy's invalid ‘Red Scare.’ Communist fears are central to the plot as the catalyst for General Ripper’s subversion of duty. Realising “the whole situation (of the Cold War) was absurd,” Kubrick sought to highlight the dangers of propaganda-driven terror by creating a sense of neurosis through Ripper’s vacant and erratic movements. This approach contrasts DeLillo’s portrayal of naive ignorance. Moreover, the composer portrays his disillusionment by reducing the atomic bomb (the symbol of civilian fear) to a metaphor for sex, and male desires to prove masculinity, through allusions to Jack the Ripper’s violent sexual tendencies, and “essence.” Kubrick further challenges the contextual political compliance by highlighting the fallibility of leaders through the characterisation of historical figures as incompetent. This is most obvious in the absurd dialogue between the opposing presidents regarding the global doom they invoked, “Don’t say that you’re more sorry than I am.”
Really good analysis. Each sentence in this is super valuable and adds a lot to your work. I never think "this is a pointless sentence" because everything is related to the ways of thinking. Through reductionism, the film juxtaposes doom with the comical chewing of gum, through cross-cutting, to criticise politicians. Furthermore, Kubrick satirises the paradoxical M.A.D policy through the ironic military motto “Peace is our profession.” The recurring motif is used in the background of combat scenes to emphasise the theorys irrationality. The failure of authoritative bodies to protect society is made obvious in the dramatic irony of a scuffle between two politicians depicted with a dolly cam, to which the President objects “you can't fight in here. This is the War Room!” The absurdity of political motivations in the period is epitomised in the concluding contrast between the montage of explosions and the non diegetic score music. Thus, Kubrick embodies post war feelings of the failure of the capitalist metanarrative to produce stable governing bodies, and furthermore criticising the prevailing trust in authority.
Another sentence and I'm just not getting the sense of the enemy being within. If the enemy is the government here, you've done an excellent job! But it needs to be more explicitly stated. Identify the notion that Americans feared the communists, when really an enemy they faced was their own incompetent democratic leaders, according to Kurbrick. This satisfies the enemies at home - but Kubrick also satirises the enemies abroad here. So it works both ways.Reacting to growing uncertainty following the dropping of the bomb, Western society returned to traditional conservative societal values creating a culture of containment and fear of the unknown. This social repression, combined with political instability and Cold War paranoia, led to the disintegration of trust in relationships. Increasingly isolated, individuals turned to material possession and social conformity to gain identities, becoming repressed under their own regulations. Sylvia Plath explicitly represents this search for authenticity within her poetry through a critical perspective of social expectations as a threat to humanity, posed by the individual and society. To ensure her existence, Plath begins a personal and anxious interrogation of herself, most clear in Daddy through her portrayal of “man in black with a Meinkampf look.” Through juxtaposing an insistent nursery rhyme tone with allusions to Nazism and the connotations of the black motif,, Plath develops a persona with an electra complex, satirising the clinging of society to oppressive values in order to feel purposeful. The threats posed by this global identity crisis are evident in the criticism of the crowd which shoves to see Lady Lazarus’ “big strip tease.” The dual symbolism of this image metaphorically represents Plath’s personal struggle with depression and the unfeeling and material-driven nature of society. A titillating and perverse tone furthers Plath’s representation of societies “comfortable concentration camp” (Freiden)
I love Betty Friedan! It is FriedAn, not FriedEn, just for next time as a form of sleazy entertainment and civilian distraction, highlighting the threat posed by social regulations. In following the philosophies of her contemporary Simone de Beauvoir that oppression creates war, Plath utilises the confessional genre to confront Cold War privacy ideologies. The analogy of writing for personal expression is evident in the simile “Sap wells like tears, like water striving to re-establish its mirror” (Words). Through the metaphor of nature imagery, Plath expresses her role to counteract social conformity to dictated truths by revealing natural truths, particularly against the disempowerment of women. In The Applicant, Plath highlights her society's return to conservatism as an attempt to retain stability, explicitly satirising the resulting oppression and commodification of women. Plath achieves this through the extended metaphor of an all knowing persona who subverts the traditional nuclear family values. The parody of housewives in The Applicant “Come here, sweetie, out of that closet,” creates an emotional dissociation, reflecting the fragmentary and isolated nature of humanity in the period, and resulting distraction through materialism. Plath’s critique of these oppressive values is amplified through the application of a condescending tone. Plath further rejects the culture of containment and privacy through her self-commodification in Lady Lazarus “for a word...or a bit of blood.” Hence, Plath partakes in the interrogation of self, following isolation as a result of politically driven paranoia. However, she rejects the widespread materialism adopted by her context as a form of self medication, finding these methods to be repressive.
I think that this paragraph strays from the ways of thinking. Your analysis is wonderful, but it focuses on Plath's critique and reflection of society more than it does the ways of thinking. Again, you can adapt this to talk about the enemy being within more, it's implcitly there, but I'm needing to use my imagination to locate where. Society, or rather, patriarchal society, is the enemy here. When she develops the electra complex, her own mind and love is the enemy, for example. So these enemies are "at home."The destructive effects of consumerism on family and religion is further criticised in DeLillo’s postmodernist novel White Noise through the representations of capitalism as a means of mass distraction from failure and person. Drawing on his perception of the “consume or die” American culture, DeLillo demonstrates consumerism as a method of distraction from mortality. This is explicit in the motif stream of consciousness “Who will die first?” interrupted by the mantra “Mastercard, Visa, American Express.” Through religious allusion to the Trinity, the composer draws connections between consumerism and faith, highlighting the contemporary nihilism, as material goods replace religion. The structural placement of this internal dialogue further reveals the incohesive and chaotic nature of the human psyche following 1945, as individuals sought to reconcile their fears through material distraction. Furthermore, DeLillo presents consumerism as an analogy for propaganda; an omnipresent being demanding complete submission. Through the skillful employment of lexical chain and sensory appeals, the composer creates a tone of excessive and overwhelming choice, revealing advertising as a method of cognitive repression. The endless soundtrack of “toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and the coffee-making machines,” diverts the protagonist from his toxic environment, maintaining his naivety. The creation of false identity further harms the individual, who realises he’s a “character that follows the name around.” DeLillo uses this epiphany to reinforce the isolating effects of the rampant consumerism of his era, echoing Plath’s sentiments. Through a series of subplots and tangents, the composer dually represents through structural and creative means, the contextual social disorder and subversion of values, present through remarriage and twisted parent-child relationships.
I think you've convinced me to read this text! It sounds wild. Ridiculously interesting. I love a good capitalism critique. This culminates in the ultimate family disintegration of adultery, serving as a catalyst for sinful revenge, and reiterating the repercussions of consumerism. The crimes nature as a “capitalist transaction” criticises the systems sinful nature, satirically revealing its destructive consequences. Consequently, the Cold War reliance on superficial and external distractions from fears is portrayed by DeLillo as being responsible for the breakdown of traditional relations with family, religion and self. Thus, this supports Plath’s perception of consumerism as a threat
I'd probably identify a poem here, like "Plath's perception of consumerism as a threat, as detailed in The Applicant..." Just for the reason that it was one of the many ideas you dealt with, and you might leave the marker like "wait, I just have to go back up and work out exactly where consumerism was dealt with.., examining its undermining effects on social values.
Again, not a lot of linking to the question. But, your understanding of the text simply cannot be doubted.Responding to the post 1945 shift in global ways of thinking, composers sought to reveal prevalent feelings of isolation, and distrust, and question social compliance to oppressive values and authorities. Through the portrayal of disturbing accounts of modern reality, these texts attempted to emulate the consequences of the failure of the human metanarrative, specifically regarding the disintegration of trust, identity, family and logic, and the threats posed to society by these internal doubts. Furthermore, composers challenged compliance to truths claimed by bodies of authority, provoking audience questioning of the roots of their fears, and leading to an understanding of the internal threat posed by oppressive bodies.
In summation,
Without using this start phrase, your sentence still makes perfect sense, and even sounds better! these texts effectively challenged the prevalent fear of external enemies by revealing the threats of the human psyche, and domestic politics.