Reflection: Body Ritual among the Nacirema
I was definitely
shocked at first after facing this significant alternation. Rather than
concentrating on historical or cultural existence of the Nacirema, what the
writer of this article truly intended was to satirize American society and
culture by suggesting several rituals that actually correspond to daily lives
of modern-day Americans. For instance, medicine men and women represent doctors
and nurses, and latipso, in which they work, describes hospitals,
as we can easily figure out that it is formed in the same way as the term ‘Nacirema’ was.
Then what made the readers, including me, could not find out these secrets and
truths that the writer hid at first? The style of writing and the usage of
words and expressions in this article are the answers for this question. As a
matter of fact, the article ‘Body Ritual among the
Nacirema’ apparently shows off lots of facets that
historical reports usually possess. Its style is descriptive and expository in
overall, which explains difficult phenomenon and customs to the readers very
clearly. Not only this, but the usage of professional vocabularies also made
the readers pay more attention to historical aspects. Generally, when people
are blocked by strange words while they are reading this style of writing, they
tend to regard them as proper nouns or jargons, and skip them rather than
comprehending one by one. Likewise, lots of words in the article such as
Nacirema or holy-mouth-men would have been regarded not meaningful enough to be
deeply understood to the readers, which made them lose the important implicit
meanings. We can say that the writer made these violations on literary norms
intentionally, and the writer’s objective was
successful as it was also obviously shown in my first impression to the article.
Moving on to the
authentic meaning that this article has, it seemed to be really indispensable
for me to look into social and historical background of the period when it was
written. ‘Body Ritual among the
Nacirema’ was published in June, 1956. 1950s of the United
States was the period of radical development. During three years of Korean War
from 1950 to 1953, a number of industries in the United States exported
countless of goods and weapons to its army, which enabled them to take
advantage of a post-war economic boom. Most of people enjoyed economic
prosperity, houses got larger and larger, and more and more people moved to the
suburbs for much better life condition. Furthermore, technology developed
dramatically due to the government's substantial investment on research and
development, which helped people live much more convenient lives with
assistance of various new inventions. However, while the life quality of people
grew up higher, ironically, people became much more desolate in terms of
relationship with others. With the advent of novel life pattern with richness,
people unconsciously became more inclined to materials, which is known as
'materialism,' which made them be too much materialistic and be negligent on
human relationship. This is what Horace Miner was intending to criticize; he
proposed that the society in 1950s of the United States was problematic, and
can be felt repulsive when it is observed through different perspective.
When it came to
this moment, it was obvious that the article ‘Body Ritual among the Nacirema’
contained lots of aspects - intentional aberration from the literal norms, and
historical style of writing that made the satires much more impressive - that
successfully maximized the effect that the writer was aiming. As I mentioned above,
Horace Miner tried to show the different side of the society of the United
States in 1950s which was hidden by people’s satisfaction on economic affluence,
through this article. Moreover, he highlighted the importance of
having diverse sights rather than being confined in illiberal analysis by showing that even the culture of the United States, which is regarded as advanced one, can be seen inhumane, and showed that it helps people deal with unfamiliar concepts such as foreign culture much more
objectively and unbiasedly. Considering a number of conflicts between people
from different countries in these days due to lack of understanding toward culture
of others and excessive ethnocentrism, it seems that it is the appropriate
attitude that we ought to possess in this egocentric society.How does the use of genre and writing style support the main ideas in George Orwell's 'Why I Write'?
George Orwell was an English
writer who had lived in socially unstable period, in which several events such
as the outbreak of Spanish Civil War and World War two made the society
chaotic. He was a writer who had regarded meticulous description with a number
of purple passages as the most crucial factors of good writings at first, but
later on, he preoccupied much more on political issues and uncovering the true
hidden faces of our society. Of course it could be insisted that his
contemporary dark atmosphere made him be much closer and more familiar to
political disputes, but considering personal background and experiences
that he had faced, it was a natural and inevitable modification. George Orwell
himself well explained about this point in the essay, ‘Why I Write.’
In order to effectively
reveal the contents that he intended to show, George Orwell developed this essay
basically by using autobiographical style. He did not tie up his sight only on
the motives for writing. Rather, he illustrated his overall lifelong
experiences and changes that he had gone since he was young. George Orwell
spent most of his early ages alone, due to significant age gap between his
siblings, and the absence of his father, which caused him to feel profound
loneliness and develop negative mannerisms. This ultimately made him produce
self-centered writings, which seemed to be narcissistic and overly imaginary.
As he grew older, he gradually changed his style into more descriptive manner
by portraying what he observed and what he did, even though he actually did not
want to. He was also into the sounds and relations of words, from which he was
able to find out the style of writing that he truly desired to write:
naturalistic novels full of decorative passages and unpleasant endings. Later
on, he faced lots of situations such as harsh days in Burma or Spanish Civil
War that gave him some ideas of the working classes and imperialism, which
eventually helped him establish the four motives for writing, shown in the
essay.
From this long
explanation of his life, readers can have various distinctive perspectives to
George Orwell’s writing style by carefully looking into his backgrounds and
experiences. As he said at the last part of the essay, “I don’t want to leave
that as the final impression,” it is apparent that George Orwell also wanted the
readers not to concentrate only on the motives for writing, specifically the
fourth one among them. That is why he tried to show off autobiographical style
in ‘Why I Write’, and he was definitely able to prevent the readers from posing
illiberal attitude toward the essay by it.
Not only this, George
Orwell introduced a poem in ‘Why I Write’ as an example to make his position much
more vivid. Initially, he quoted ‘Paradise Lost’ in order to support his ideas
of the joy of words that he was fascinated by when he was a teenager. He depicted
the pleasant feeling that he felt when he first read the poem by saying, “it
sent shivers down my backbone,” and adding to it, he directly brought ‘hee’ and
‘he’ from the poem to the essay. Thanks to the usage of specific parts of the
poem that apparently reveals what George Orwell was thrilled by, the readers
can fully sympathize with his thoughts, and ultimately can understand how the
joy of words affected his writing style. Likewise, the poem that George Orwell
wrote in 1935 is also substantially influential. By using the poem with full of
his personal emotions and feelings expressing his dilemma, he was able to convey
his attitude toward the society to the readers much more accurately, compared
to illustrating in plain sentences. Like this, using poems in the essay allowed
George Orwell to achieve precise interpretation of the readers of his ideas.
George Orwell was able to
successfully show his writing styles, how they were formed, and how they
altered as time passed through the essay, ‘Why I Write.’ He utilized two main
methods, autobiographical writing and poetry, which brought up and maximized the
positive effects that enabled the readers to interpret what he was trying to
say much more precisely, as they are mentioned above. To generally sum up, as
he said, “Good prose is like a windowpane,” George Orwell’s main objective of
writing this essay was to propose several factors of good writings by giving
his personal story, but he insisted that rather than being fixed, they are varied
as they reflect the writer.
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