12/20/17 Daily Blog Post

Allegories Galore 

     Today's class started off by revisiting yesterday's lesson on allegories and their influence on film. While we previously discussed the some of the symbols and allegories used in chess game scene from The Wire, today we went more in depth with the figurative and literal parallels between the game and the characters. All of the chess pieces mentioned tie into specific characters and positions in the show, such as the king and queen representing the kingpin/leader of a gang and his "get shit done" person that was no pushover. One of the other pieces that was mentioned was the castle, which was a symbol for their stash that they constantly had to move and protect from rival gangs. But the most important piece that was referenced was the pawn because it was an allegory for these three characters and how they're only the foot soldiers/lackeys in the drug trade.
     We then looked at a few of the topics that appeared throughout the clip and created themes for them by relating them to what the text was trying to comment about them. Some of the topics found were: the drug war/war, watering-down of drugs, social hierarchy, social awareness, and poverty. The topic my group came up with was: "It's easy to fall into poverty but not to get out of it," which was extremely relevant to the three characters because they were most likely only involved in the drug trade to make enough money to sustain themselves, but they kept running into more problems and this was the most efficient way to earn a profit. Most themes the class came up with involved the show's commentary on social hierarchy and social awareness, and how there are multiple positions in the drug trade, but limited mobility in ranks.
     For the last fifteen minutes of class, we read one of the three articles on Net Neutrality that Mr. Rivers posted on Google classroom, and tried to draw similarities between what's currently happening in our world and what happened in Ready Player One. By the beginning of tomorrow's class, each student should be prepared to share the parallels they found and how Ready Player One works as an allegory for the endangerment of Net Neutrality.
     Allegories can be found in a multitude of stories and can range in their topics of commentary, such as political or societal. Two excellent examples of popular texts that function both as stories and allegories for what was going on during that time, are Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies. The plot of George Orwell's Animal Farm revolves around the different kinds of animals living on a farm, that begin to form a society with rules and how they eventually revolt against the humans. Through Orwell's incorporation of historical figures and their behaviors in the animals themselves, Animal Farm is actually an allegory for the communism in Russia and the effects of its social hierarchy. Differing from Orwell's political commentary, William Golding's Lord of The Flies focuses more on society and the influence and effectiveness of its rules. While story's plot is about a group of young boys that are stranded on an island without help or adults, it actually questions the nature of human beings and if people are born as peaceful or violent creatures.