Oliver Sacks, "The Mind's Eye" and:

Jonathan Boyarin, "Waiting for a Jew: Marginal Redemption at the Eighth Street Shul"

Annie Dillard, "The Wreck of Time: Taking Our Century's Measure"

Sacks and Boyarin: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...

Both Boyarin, in "Waiting for a Jew: Marginal Redemption at the Eighth Street Shul", and Sacks, in The Mind's Eye: What the Blind See, act as observers attempting to make sense of alien worlds. While Sacks watches, as it were, from the outside, Boyarin often alternates between the roles of actor and spectator.

How does the status of the observer, with respect to the system under observation, affect the nature of observations made and what implications does this have for an observer attempting to understand him/herself?

Monika Krishnan, Fall 2005

Sacks & Dillard: Living After the End of the World

Annie Dillard, in her essay The Wreck of Time: Taking Our Century's Measure considers the question “How can an individual count?” in the world, when most of the information that we get every day shows us, in one way or another, just how insignificant a number ‘one' is. She discusses what it takes, or might take, to make sense of all the numbers and information that we are being bombarded with, and how we might use this information to consider our own lives, and our own place in the world. Similarly, Oliver Sacks in The Mind's Eye: What the Blind See looks at various people confronted with extraordinary events in their lives, and shows how they respond – cognitively and emotionally – to what we might consider to be personal cataclysms.

For this assignment, I would like you to write a paper which considers the role of cataclysms in our lives, both knowing about them and experiencing them personally. Please base your essay on an answer to the following question:

How does crisis teach us how to live?

 In your paper, you'll need to make specific claims about what constitutes a crisis, and to discuss the specific effects that a particular kind of crisis will have on us. You should also consider the following questions:

•  What does crisis teach us?

•  How do we learn from it?

•  What does it make us do?

•  How is this different to what we would normally do?

Of course, you may come up with more questions like this, and answer them instead of, or as well as, the four questions in the bullet points above. But the questions should help get you started.

I am expecting a balanced essay that represents your own ideas and those in Dillard and Sacks equally. I am looking for original thinking about the two assigned essays which builds on your close reading of specific passages of the readings.

Heather Robinson, Fall 2005

For more assignment ideas involving this essay, please visit the Sacks link-o-mat.

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