Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
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Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#2> No Spoilers.
This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#3> No Spoilers. This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
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Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#4> No Spoilers. This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
How could the age of the novel affect the answer to that question?
Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#5> No Spoilers. This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
Yes and no. I haven't read Tolstoy yet, and it's on my bucket list to do so. Ideally I'd like to go into that without any major spoilers.
But at the same time, if a book has stood the test of time of 120-years... the spoiler probably would only very slightly diminish my enjoyment of it. For example, even knowing the plot of the Sherlock Holmes stories and William Poe's mystery poems, I still get enjoyment from re-reading them, in a way that I don't from Dan Brown, for example.
Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#6> But what do we do? […] We do not merely do nothing to get rid of the conditions in which such people are born – we actually encourage the institutions which produce them. We all know what these institutions are: the mills, the factories, the workshops, the inns, the pot-houses, the brothels. And far from wiping out establishments of this sort – considering them necessary, we encourage and regulate them.
Would the world really have less crime if we didn't have factories and inns? Agrarianism is so alien to modern life I can hardly imagine it being a dominant philosophy.
Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#7> No Spoilers. This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
I don't see why the age of the novel factors in. Reading is a subjective experience with a variety of modes and conditions, so if for example the subject is working their way through old novels as a hobby then yes, I really can see why it'd be just as annoying to have the 120 year old plot spoiled as it would be for a brand new movie.
Still, I think "spoiler alert" is a lot better in cases like these than "no spoilers." It gives freedom of choice to the reader.
Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#8> No Spoilers. This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
Yes and no. I haven't read Tolstoy yet, and it's on my bucket list to do so. Ideally I'd like to go into that without any major spoilers. But at the same time, if a book has stood the test of time of 120-years... the spoiler probably would only very slightly diminish my enjoyment of it. For example, even knowing the plot of the Sherlock Holmes stories and William Poe's mystery poems, I still get enjoyment from re-rea…
Very much so. In a Dan Brown novel, the plot is the point. For Tolstoy, the plot is a useful device on which to hang what he's actually writing about.
Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#9> No Spoilers. This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
How could the age of the novel affect the answer to that question?
Many people think that we are in a totally unprecendented time in history. So you "don't get to" use history to criticize their great and unique ideas ... that ... mostly are not entirely unprecedented or original.
Just like they did in the 60s ... and the 20s ... and during the French revolution ... and 100 times before and in between those ... Now don't get me wrong, there is something new everytime. Like pictures in the 20s. Recorded music in the 60 (the drugs, I'm afraid, date back longer than recorded history. Sure. Not the exact same drugs. The abuse of them, and the scale of the abuse). But especially don't compare today with the French revolutionaries, because someone might look up what the revolutionaries did once they got what they wanted (as if that's any guarantee the evolution now will be the same, but it is a possibility).
But No ! You keep hearing it's different this time. But we have Google now ! And it's the "first" time ever we see the evil of the church/faith. And we're finally going to eliminate racism, that's the first time ever.
Many people actually believe that such things are new, but ...
Nope, the Roman Republic did that (with about as mixed a success as we did. In some places, they succeeded. Elsewhere ...), and very likely ancient Egypt was a mixed white/black society at least for a period, as was Rome. Which meant the fight for equality is probably older than the concept of a building with first floor, as that didn't exist in the early Egypt. In other words: everything about humans, especially how society is organised, things like families, faith, law, state organisation, is not just old, it's very very very very old. Most of it probably older than the pyramids.
Re: Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ is strikingly similar to how we treat prisoners today
#10The 'we' here seems to assume the USA? Because this is nothing like the prison systems around here.