dimensions of personality
In the midst of reading The Conquest of America, a few sentences brought to mind the real similarities between social science and science fiction, reality and fantasy...
Communication is "the interaction of individual with individual, the interaction that occurs between the person and his social group, the person and the natural world, the person and the religious universe," Todorov postulates (69). This definition seemed quite accurate to me, because the concept of communicating with the world is obviously distinct from the concept of communicating with a specific person, and, as a result, takes on different characteristics when put into practice.
However, this passage also reminded me of an explanation Card makes in the introduction to Speaker for the Dead: "Our whole demeanor changes, our mannerisms, our figures of speech, when we move from one context to another." As a result, it is difficult to write a book with many important characters because, in order for them to be fully developed, the writer has to explore their relationship with each other character, and different combinations of multiple characters.
It seems to me that the concepts of these two passages are quite similar, although one addresses issues of communication in a real historical situation, and the other characterization of fictional persons thousands of years in the future. Nevertheless, the underlying concept is that people change substantially depending on their surroundings and what they hope to accomplish in terms of communication and interaction. I think the two ideas could be applied to each situation. Communication differs not only when it is addressed to the world rather than an individual, but also depending on which individual it is addressed to. Likewise, people change depending on whether they are concentrating on their relationships with another individual, a group of individuals, or the world.
posted by lennearb @ 1:32 AM
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