{"id":984,"date":"2020-04-14T22:12:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T22:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=984"},"modified":"2020-04-14T22:35:37","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T22:35:37","slug":"984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/gbatista\/984\/","title":{"rendered":"blindness and society"},"content":{"rendered":"

When reading Zoshchenko’s poems, I found\u00a0Poverty<\/em> to be particularly salient, especially once the lights were turned on and the detriments of the main character’s living conditions were exposed. I believe that this story was an allegory for how some people react to their society when they are made aware of their society’s shortcomings, with some actively working to make it better, while others prefer not to expend that effort, but to go back into a state where they can ignore those shortcomings.<\/p>\n

The main character’s belief that he was living in luxury made it all the more painful for him when he realized that he was living in squalor. Despite this, he put his nose to the grindstone and renovated his living quarters, putting all his money and time into ensuring that his room was clean, presentable, and comfortable to live in with the lights on. He represents the kind of person that, when confronted with issues the society is facing, chooses to engage with them and try to make his life better. My belief in this representation is bolstered by the fact that they were just starting to build up the Soviet Union, so I believe that he represents the kind of person who took part in that.<\/p>\n

His actions are in stark contrast to the landlady, however, who chose to return to the literal dark ages when her electric lights reveal that her apartment was disgusting. She didn’t want to put the work in to fix her living situation though, so she chose to continue living that way, but without lights so she couldn’t see how she was living. Not only did she refuse to improve her life and living space, but she refused to allow others to keep the luxuries that let them enjoy their newfound cleanliness and organization. I believe that she is meant to represent those who refuse to accept the new society because it exposes current issues, and they don’t want to work to make their society better. This could also be read more directly with the woman as a stand-in for traditional values standing in the way of technological innovation, but given the time this was written, I believe\u00a0Poverty<\/em> was meant to be an allegory for how some people actively try to improve society, while others try to shut out problems and hold the improvers back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When reading Zoshchenko’s poems, I found\u00a0Poverty to be particularly salient, especially once the lights were turned on and the detriments of the main character’s living conditions were exposed. I believe that this story was an allegory for how some people react to their society when they are made aware of their society’s shortcomings, with some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1018,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-10-building-the-ussr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1018"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}