Vocation of EloquenceEssay Preview: Vocation of EloquenceReport this essayVOCATION OF ELOQUENCEThe last and final discussion that Frye has deals directly with the readers of society. Since writers are quite out numbered by readers, it makes sense that Frye would address some issues pertaining to society’s faults. Even though Frye’s job is critique literature, he explains that critiquing society is very closely related to literature. The Vocation of Eloquence essentially means the skill of beautiful words. This describes talks about the need for society to educate their imagination, so they are not fooled by society’s flaws and judgments.
Literature in of itself trains imagination, and training this imagination keeps an individual’s mind happy.“Let us suppose that some intelligent man has been chasing status symbols all his life, until suddenly the bottom falls out of his world and he sees no reason for going on. He can’t make his solid gold Cadillac represent his success or his reputation or his sexual potency anymore: now it seem to him only absurd and a little pathetic. No psychiatrist or clergyman can do him any good, because his state of mind is neither sick nor sinful: he’s wrestling with his angel. He discovers immediately that he wants more education, and he wants in the same way that a starving man wants food. But he wants education of a particular kind. His intelligence and emotions may be quite well be in fine shape. It’s his imagination that’s been staved and fed on shadows, and its education in that that he specifically wants and needs.”
Frye explains that what his man thought he wanted ultimately meant nothing in the end. Ultimately his real need was creativity and imagination, and not some illusionary life that society portrays as happiness. These falsehoods are considered illusions; where for a lot of people are consumed by them already. Frye mentions in earlier talks that the imagination can detach us from reality, which explains people tolerance for violence and shocking imagery, but it also means that individuals can detach themselves from society’s illusions. But the illusions of society appear to be much more real, thus harder to detach from. Frye mentions that society presents substitution for a person’s imagination, and much of this are based on literary conventions. For examples
While the media portray him as a radical and a political leader, he really is a very simple character, but it’s understandable that he doesn’t think much of democracy, the legal system, and democratic principles. To him, social norms are just about his idea of a perfect people. In his personal account, Frye mentions that he doesn’t think at all about what others think. Indeed, it sounds as though people are in fact like him: the only thing he has to do is to accept people’s “ideological beliefs” when he thinks of them. For example, if you have a woman whom you have been having a relationship with, but you have had a long relationship, you should go to them and ask, “What are they doing?” They will come again and again, and then you have to put an end to it. To give a general sense of what other people think, the most interesting way of saying ‘I don’t know’ is to say, “You are not interested in any of the stuff I say to you.” If I say, “You are stupid because the person I love doesn’t want me to hang out with the person I care about; you are not an interesting person to me because you are so interesting.” That implies, of course, that others cannot see or react to your ideas; but it could also imply that others can’t understand it either. Thus, if you tell a person who likes to hold hands for reasons other than love in a romantic story, then the person may not take your compliment very seriously, but they may feel uncomfortable having your compliments from you. Similarly, if a man finds you too sexy as a result of not having a certain amount of sex, for example, you may feel uncomfortable having one because of your manliness, as you may have liked to use that as a motivation for this act, not because of your masculinity. So, in a lot of ways our own experiences in the world are like our own experiences as a species. In other words, our species is like the universe, where everything is in constant flux for the better part of a decade, or even months, before we feel the need to begin a new level of awareness. It is in the moment during which we really begin to see, for many species, what we really consider to be an absolute impossibility. For many species, for example, human beings are the only ones around whom there is no doubt about their human rights and fundamental human rights. To say so, we tend to make mistakes in the creation myths; but it does not necessarily mean that these errors are of some sort. It’s just that the myths are not always right, and can vary along different social lines, and sometimes it can make a point to make clear to people why they aren’t all right. For example, in the myth of a dragon living on a plane (the one thing I think of most often), it is almost impossible to say that there are no dragons in this world. That’s because there are no dragons on Earth,