Bounty

I saw some very similar themes in Bounty as those we saw last week in Black Hole. It is interesting to see how people can be demonized for such simple deformities. It also draws a parallel to the modern issue of homosexuality: People fear what they are unfamiliar with. It is such a difficult issue to approach. How do we cause people to understand the things they fear without infringing on their right to be afraid? To paraphrase a Galileo, "You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself." Throughout Bounty, I was unsure of how it was all going to wrap up. When he finally makes it to his sister and things seem to be going well for him, I got scared that it was going to end that way, with no powerful moral message. But I was satisfied overall with how it ended. I think it was a noble choice to leave the comfort of his life with his sister and her lover in order to fight for the rights of all Flawed.

Bounty

I found Bounty to have a quite similar plot line, or even a similar monomyth to several of the stories in things such as The X-Men, the first and most noticeable similarity being that both are thinly veiled or completely evident metaphors for the racism that was ever present throughout western history, dealing not only with the slave trade, which is only really evident in Bounty, but also the segregation and disgust with the Flawed's, quite similar to the mutants. The story makes a big point of how society has digressed, suggesting that not all change is positive, and that history is doomed to repeat itself over and over, apocalypse after apocalypse.

Bounty

When reading Bounty, it was all too obvious to me the similarities between this and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Although the language used in bounty isn't made up like it is in A Clockwork Orange, the word choice is reminiscent of older times, and there are a lot of words that I had to look up because I had never heard them before, which reminded me of when I was reading A Clockwork Orange and it felt like I was learning an entirely new language. The voice and tone of the two readings are also comparable. Other aspects that are similar are the use of drugs-- in this regard, what sparked my memory back to A Clockwork Orange the most was the use of the word "toot." It certainly isn't a word that people use now when they use cocaine (or is it? I'm not exactly the most knowledgeable on the subject), and the word has an almost comical feel to it, much like the words used in A Clockwork Orange. Although the stories unfold very differently, it's clear to see that these authors had similar ideas of a post-apocalyptic world.

Bounty

The reading was very interesting. Cole was flawed because of his deformed feet, something he had no control of; and he was marked by his bracelet, so people could literally identify him as a man that "may literally be purchased and enslaved". It reminded me a lot about the Holocaust, in which many were marked with symbols so that other people could identify them as inferior and to be enslaved like in the Concentration Camps. One specific type of people were Jewish identical twins. They had no control of being genetically identical. This was something they were born with, but were considered flawed and the people in power felt that they could enslave and experiment as much as they want on the young children who were twins. Or even more comparative to the story were the disabled people during the Holocaust who were tortured and enslaved because of their physical disabilities. This story really helps to draw parallels to many types of discrimination that occurred throughout history.

Bounty

I found the short story “Bounty” to be very emotional. It was always hard for me to talk about slavery in school, because it seems unbelievable that a system so horrid ever existed in our country. This shorty story was hard to read because even though it was fictional, events like the ones in the story have already happened on a large scale in the history of our nation. The story included so much discrimination, but I found it interesting that there was a difference in the story and history. African Americans who were enslaved in the United States were human, and the only thing that separated them from the rest of society was the color of their skin, but the humans in the story were “flawed”. Of course, they had intellect and all other human aspects, but it makes an interesting debate about what makes someone human. Although the “flawed” members of society had physical deformities, they did not deserve the treatment they received. I also would find it interesting to learn background information on the story, like how the flawed people became flawed and how system of enslaving the flawed members of society was instituted. It was amazing that the main character could remain hopeful and continue his fight to find his sister when the overarching power of the system made life seem hopeless.

Bounty

While reading Bounty, what really stood out to me was the division of social classes based on physical features.  Those that were "flawed" were looked down upon by those that were "normal."  This reminded me of Black Hole when Chris caught the "bug" that led to a physical deformity and isolation from her "normal" life.  The readers of Black Hole were able to compare how people viewed her before and after she caught the sexually transmitted disease.  Although these deformities in Bounty and Black Hole don't necessarily exist in reality, they bring up issues that are close to home.  It made me think of events in U.S. history such as slavery and racial discrimination.  I interpreted those of colored skin as those that were "flawed" and those that weren't as "normal."  The imbalanced relationship between the victim and the perpetrator in Bounty greatly resembled the relationship between people of color and people that weren't of color.  It's always refreshing to read fictional texts that address current or past situations because it allows me to see important aspects of an issue that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

11/11/2014 Ian Crowley

I really enjoyed reading the novel Bounty by George Saunders. To me this novel truly encompasses everything that we have discussed in class so far this year. This story shows how differently people react when they are in the middle of though times. Some individuals, like Father Oswald believe in God the most when being faced with adversity, however others begin to questions their beliefs. If there is a God, then why would he allow bad things to happen in the world? This story also made me think about our tendencies to take things for granted. Cole lives in a society where the flawed are oppressed by the normal. Cole wishes that society would go back to the way it used to be, so he could go about his day doing simple things and not worry about being arrested. People all over the world are oppressed like the characters in Bounty, and sometimes I think we forget that. We take our freedoms in life for granted, while others face abuse and injustice on a daily basis.