Theuth and Thamus

Socrates uses a story about an Egyptian god called Theuth and an Egyptian king named Thamus. Theuth comes to Thamus bringing gifts and a gift he brought was letters. Now all the other gifts he had brought, Thamus had said what was right and wrong with each. When Theuth presented the letters, he said that they would make Egyptians “wiser and would improve their memory.” Thamus stated that Theuth was wrong and the letters would actually produce forgetfulness rather than memory. He said that Egyptians would write down things rather than simply remembering them and would refer back to their writing to remind themselves what they are forgetting. He uses this story to say that oral communication takes practice and wisdom where as written communication is just a reminder and is useful to the less wise person.

Chariot Metaphor

In Phaedrus, Socrates uses a metaphor about a chariot. This metaphor included a charioteer and two horses. The charioteer symbolized us while the two horses symbolized different ways to handle situations. The white horse was clean and beautiful, basically the good horse; it symbolized doing the right thing and it explicitly followed the charioteer’s commands. The black horse was crooked and ugly and didn’t follow the charioteer’s lead; it put up a struggle and would try to push forward when the charioteer didn’t want them to. In the book, the metaphor was talking about love and temptation; the white horse tried to hold back from temptation while the dark horse pushed towards temptations and would make the charioteer fall into his desires. On a deeper level, it was talking about how one who is speaking can both rise up and help his audience understand his level of thinking (white horse), or it can go down the audience’s level and not aid them to understand.

Customer Reviews

Of the customer reviews for Zeitoun that I read, the readers seemed to be in awe of Egger’s work. They continually praised his views on the issue and how he conveyed the information. They didn’t seem to have many negative things to say about the book; in their opinion, everyone should read it and hear Zeitoun’s story. Their opinions seemed to be one sided and didn’t talk about any negative aspects of the book. The professional book reviewers tried to keep objectivity through their reviews, where as the customers just continued to say how good Egger’s was. Their reviews seemed more passionate but, in turn, were less trustworthy and more biased than the professional reviews.

Zeitoun Reviews

In the reviews of Zeitoun, I thought that Timothy Egan got a message out of the book that Eggers wanted. He mentioned how Eggers showed the damage Katrina and the government had rather than telling it which made the book more powerful. He seemed to think that the calm voice Eggers used throughout the book made it more impactful on the reader, which is correct. Valerie Martin had an opinionated view on the book and viewed the first half of it as “not beautifully written” and went on to say how overly sweet it was. I didn’t really agree with that and I think that her review was a poor review on the book as a whole.  The other review gave a lot of incite to the different sides of the book and all the issues dealing with the time period. It also helped that he knew Eggers and knew where he was coming from.

Corrections

When I read the comments on my first paper, I realized that the way I worded sentences could be ambiguous at times and also awkward. I used this information to reread my second paper and tried to make it more clear and understandable. Also, I didn’t realize how much I repeated phrases in close proximity; I definitely used this to help me revise my research paper. Another thing the corrections showed me was that I didn’t use nearly enough commas in my original paper. When I was editing the one due tomorrow, I tried to pay special attention to places where I should have put commas.

Zeitoun

Not only did I first read, but I first heard about Zeitoun this summer when I found out that I was supposed to read that for school. My brother-in-law had said he wanted to read before I knew that was what I had to read but I didn’t pay much attention to him. Whenever I received the book from Mars Hill, I took it with me on a trip to Florida and read the whole thing on my vacation. It turns out that the book actually held my interest which I thought it would be so boring. I basically read the entire book in about a week which is decent for me since I didn’t want to read it to begin with.

Research Paper and It's Many Problems.

In my paper, my weak parts might be me repeating myself a lot; a peer reviewer would help with that because they can tell me when I’m being too wordy or when I’ve stated something too often. Another problem I might face is not getting my point across as much as I need to; a peer reviewer would help because then they could tell me if they could understand my topic and see what I was trying to say. Another problem might be that it’s monotonous and boring; I’d like to have someone to tell me if it is boring so I can try to fix that.