compare and contrast
Both Sonja Tanner’s “On Plato’s Cave” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Writer’s Responsibility” focus on the juxtaposition between the real and the imagined; A, however, suggests that it is, in fact, society’s ignorance and willingness to ignore the relationship between the real and the imagined that leads to the writer’s responsibility to make the relationship clear, while T highlights that the relationship is strained and obscured and that the responsibility is on the individual to forge the connections between the real and the imagined.
Atwood uses the metphors of “the mirror” and “Disneyland of the soul” (441) to establish the audience’s desire, which inherently includes an ignorance of the “real.” She states that the audience, for all intents and purposes society, wants the artist to merely “entertain and divert, nothing more” (441). A points out that this “entertain[ment]” takes the for of escape or an imagined reality that is starkly different from real “life” (441). Her use of the metaphor “Disneyland” of the soul, containing Romanceland, Spyland, Pornoland, and all the other Escapeland” (441) highlights that as consumers, society prefers to escape reality when they engage with are.
Similarly, Tanner discusses the desires of the audience, in this case captive audience；she suggests that rather than ignore the “real”, the real is obscured from them. She questions whether “we ever receive information or entertainment without thinking about where it actually comes from” and what the persons creating the images “represent” (399). The significance of the difference between A and T’s ideas about the audience’s engagement with reality is that A puts the responsibility on writers as a collective, while T suggests that it is the individual’s responsibility to make these distinctions to between the imagined and the real clear to society.
Atwood uses the metphors of “the mirror” and “Disneyland of the soul” (441) to establish the audience’s desire, which inherently includes an ignorance of the “real.” She states that the audience, for all intents and purposes society, wants the artist to merely “entertain and divert, nothing more” (441). A points out that this “entertain[ment]” takes the for of escape or an imagined reality that is starkly different from real “life” (441). Her use of the metaphor “Disneyland” of the soul, containing Romanceland, Spyland, Pornoland, and all the other Escapeland” (441) highlights that as consumers, society prefers to escape reality when they engage with are.
Similarly, Tanner discusses the desires of the audience, in this case captive audience；she suggests that rather than ignore the “real”, the real is obscured from them. She questions whether “we ever receive information or entertainment without thinking about where it actually comes from” and what the persons creating the images “represent” (399). The significance of the difference between A and T’s ideas about the audience’s engagement with reality is that A puts the responsibility on writers as a collective, while T suggests that it is the individual’s responsibility to make these distinctions to between the imagined and the real clear to society.