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I am going to do my presentation by using ideas from the book All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren that connect.
Throughout this class I have been reminded of the book
The book deals a lot with the issues of past. Repeatedly, Warren reminds us that if we cannot understand the past, we will never change the future.
A quote fro the book goes, “I tried to tell her how if you could not accept the past and its burden, there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other, and how if you could not accept the past you might hope for the future, for only out of the past can you make the future.”
This idea links strongly to evolution, and more specifically, how we can manipulate evolution. The idea that we must accept the past to have a future always stuck with me and I think the theme ties in well to this course. We have a definite past, present and future in this class, and it mirrors the biological evolution of our world. Our biggest issue in this course was making sense of our past in order to evolve in the present, creating a future.
We talked continually about the importance of the past and argued whether it defined us. We never agreed unanimously on an answer, but we can all accept that at least understanding the past is necessary.
Now, as Keely talked about the web, I want to talk about the web as it is defined in All the King’s Men.
In the book, Warren talks about the metaphorical spider web.
In the book, he writes, ”Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time he learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle.”
I think this idea is so relevant to our course. This quote is talking about how all people effect each other. I felt strongly throughout this term, and I think most people will agree, that the learning I did in this class was not solely through my interpretations. Everyone’s contributions influenced my ideas and even, sometimes, changed my mind.
We all effect each other – be it an offhanded comment or a well-phrased idea from the forum. Everything will be interpreted by everyone in their own way, and that is where the real learning and evolution takes place in our course.