Engw 1101 - Short Talks by Anne Carson

Zhanibek Khairulla

Trudy Stone

ENGW 1101

December 9, 2015

Paper #3

        Short talks by Anne Carson are series of meditation, written in complex, unclear way. From first reading it seemed boring and strange, but something captured my attention in these short talks. I don’t know what is it, but I think Carson described it in her short talks and in the introduction. We can an illustration of that in the introduction: “In a good story, Aristotle tells us, everything that happens is pushed by something else.” Maybe this so called “something else” made me interested in Short Talks? This sentence of introduction describes a purpose of most short talks. Carson may have applied this idea in short talks in a tricky way. However, some short talks seem to have something common with the main idea. Especially short talks “On the Rules of Perspective” and “On Major and Minor” contain a similar notion, stated in the introduction.

        Anne Carson lists major and minor things in “on major and minor” short talk. She states that major things are wind, good fighting horse, evil, the way people choose their king, inexhaustible love. This list creates a picture of the good story that Aristotle emphasized. Perhaps, Carson is indicating changes by listing wind because throughout a history of a mankind there were changes in people’s lives. Historically, people never lived in peace without experiencing changes. Changes often came along with evil. In ancient times, people conquered their neighbors land with their good fighting horses and bringing the changes to its neighbors. War is exactly what Carson means by saying wind and evil. How did people live in Europe before twentieth century? They were in peace and prosperity unless Hitler began his aggressive acts, which developed a great war of all times. One person was a cause of millions of deaths in a great war, but was the war leading to good outcome or evil outcome? In reality, World War II led European countries to form United Nations. This formation was a foundation of peace in the world, which is still serving to the defense of people. Carson lists preposition, which probably means being prepared to face new hardships, resist them. Since World War II people live in a piece and freely continue innovating, discovering and making each other’s lives better. Carson wrote the way people choose their king in order to indicate that after difficulties like war, people make decisions that will lead to a good story or choose a fair, just, wise, strong king. Carson is emphasizing that so called “something else” pushes humanity to evil acts as Hitler did, and it leads humanity to a good story in which we are currently living. There is no piece in this world without a war and there is no a good story of Aristotle without something that pushes the story to a happy end. From this short talk we can conclude that previously mentioned “something else” can be evil acts of humans.