ipl-logo

Appointment By Lee Ho-Chul

1578 Words7 Pages

Lee Ho-Chul’s short story, “The Deputy Mayor Does Not Go to Take Up His Appointment”, depicts Kyu-ho’s conflict with Korea’s authoritarian government in a humorous light. His struggles effectively demonstrate Bergson’s theory of the conflict between one’s body and one’s soul to an extreme. Bergson describes the relationship between body and soul as the soul being “tantalized by the needs of the body” (Bergson 17b). In other words, the soul, or one’s mind or true being, is thought of as pure, perfected, and graceful, however, it is often restricted to the imperfections and clumsiness of the actual physical body. This restriction and incongruity between the soul and body creates a ridiculous and humorous effect. Kyu-ho’s chaotic journey depicts …show more content…

Kyu-ho’s conflict between body and soul can be paralleled to the conflict between body and soul within an individual under an authoritarian rule. As depicted throughout Ho-Chul’s story, under authoritarian rule, individuals are pressured to exhibit or not exhibit certain behaviors and beliefs. This pressure is related to the “body” in Bergson’s theory. However, the individual has a “soul” which represents the way in which he/she wishes to behave and wishes to believe. Much like the comic in Bergson’s theory, the soul is restricted by the means of the body. Individuals, their lifestyles, and their beliefs will be restricted under an authoritarian rule. When the body and soul match and agree, one will see “vitality”. In other words, when the values of an individual align with those of the authoritarian rule, one can expect this individual will thrive in this environment. However, often times this is not the case. More often than not, body and soul will not align. If this is the case, one can expect detrimental effects, analogous to that in Kyu-ho’s experience. Kyu-ho becomes a slave to his bodily needs, forcing him to abandon his soul altogether. The individual under authoritarian rule has a similar experience. The individual is pressured through threats and fear tactics to exhibit the “body”, or the authoritarian values, and to abandon the “soul”, or the individual values. The authoritarian rule requires unquestioning obedience much like Kyu-ho’s body forces him to respond aimlessly to its needs. This is not only an exhausting endeavor for the individual, but it is also detrimental to the health of the individual. After abandoning his soul altogether, Kyu-ho begins to experience further negative and deteriorating effects on his body. This

Show More
Related
281 Words | 2 Pages

Additionally, Shulman’s main argument remains that discovering a soul

Read More
213 Words | 1 Pages

He further to response to Princess Elisabeth question by introducing to her what is called (Cartesian Dualism) he uses these to explain to her that the mind, soul and the body are not the same and can never be same, which came to conclude that your mind cannot be your body and your body cannot be your mind. He also explains

Read More
586 Words | 3 Pages

For this assignment I attended Chang-Ray-Lee’s reading. At the beginning of the event he flatly told the audience that instead of reading from one of the books that have been published, he would give us a glimpse of the novel that he was currently writing. Before he started reading, Chang-Ray-Lee gave the audience a bit of background information in regards to the story, such as the setting of the story, the characters that would be in it, and where he received his inspiration to write this story. Since I was not familiar with Chang-Ray-Lee’s works it was a bit difficult for me to go in to the event with an idea of what his writing style was like. So I honestly was not sure what to expect or to look for as I listened.

Read More
745 Words | 3 Pages

In response to the long-standing philosophical question of immorality, many philosophers have posited the soul criterion, which asserts the soul constitutes personal identity and survives physical death. In The Myth of the Soul, Clarence Darrow rejects the existence of the soul in his case against the notion of immortality and an afterlife. His primary argument against the soul criterion is that no good explanation exists for how a soul enters a body, or when its beginning might occur. (Darrow 43) After first explicating Darrow 's view, I will present what I believe is its greatest shortcoming, an inconsistent use of the term soul, and argue that this weakness impacts the overall strength of his argument.

Read More
810 Words | 4 Pages

Since the beginning of the human existence, man has always dominated and ruled over one another be it empires, corporations, or small groups. Authority and obedience has always been a factor of who we are. This natural occurrence can be seen clearly through the psychological experiments known as The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both of these studies are based on how human beings react to authority figures and what their obedience is when faced with conflict.

Read More
753 Words | 4 Pages

Yet, no one dares to rebel against the government and their crude form of control. There is minor opposition to the authority in this society because people are born with the ideas dictated into their minds and harsh penalties come with the actions. The way people were raised and taught by the Councils’ relentless guidelines forces them to live a life of obedience and fear. From a very young age, children were taught to

Read More
1596 Words | 7 Pages

First falling in love with a man from a dream, who she later learns to be Liu Mengmei, Du Li-niang awakes with a broken heart and a crippling longing for her lover. Feeling oppressed and with few options to resolve the situation and bring her and Liu Mengmei together, Du Li-niang consciously allows her depression and broken heart to consume and kill her. This conscious decision to die is significant in the way that it actively contradicts what the audience would expect the passive and hopeless beauty of the Caizi-Jiaren model to do. As opposed to wallowing around in pain, waiting for the hero to arrive, Du Li-niang’s decisive actions in dying juxtapose the audience’s assumptions with the performance’s realities.

Read More
1492 Words | 6 Pages

Its influence derives from characters who depend on materialistic values to display prosperity, maintain power and stay healthy. Huong uses the characters’ meals to emphasize the conditions in which different echelons of society are forced to live and to portray the contrast in the character 's’ life styles. The authors first use of this representation is directed towards families who are at the bottom of the hierarchy and the characters financial struggles are illustrated through the quality of their food. For instance, when Chinh becomes ill with diabetes, Que makes great sacrifices in order to provide him with food and medicine throughout his illness. Huong’s oddly detailed description about their rapidly declining food supply provides insight into the harsh living conditions.

Read More
1841 Words | 8 Pages

Only through harmony can the soul just. When the soul is just, the body can function properly as a whole. At this point, the quest for knowledge can be achieved. Through knowledge, one can ultimately achieve the good. The importance of moving from the sensible to the intelligible realm is to use knowledge to bring us to the good, or else inevitably suffer in the end from inner

Read More
1115 Words | 5 Pages

According to Beth, besides its important role in the creative process, negative capability also had for both Keats and Austen a moral dimension, in that it allows individuals to overcome selfishness and experience compassion for others. Another name for this aspect of negative capability is the sympathetic imagination and the most influential proponents of this concept was Adam Smith. As James Engell notes, Smith clearly proposes that "sympathy is the basis of all moral thought and action, and the sole agency by which this sympathetic feeling operates is the imagination"(88). Engell also claims that Smith 's theory of moral sentiments "was hugely influential" and names William Hazlitt and Percy Bysshe Shelley Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Keats

Read More
758 Words | 4 Pages

Over time, this results in the loss of the people’s ability to think logically to generate doubts against their leaders. The government’s implementation of mass-surveillance techniques makes people vulnerable to their leader’s conditioning. Both regimes draw upon the human nature of conformity to mold its citizens’ behaviors so that they are more subservient to the party. Although these points are important, the premier idea is that people are unaware that they are subjected to conditioning by relying on an authoritarian leader to select rules of conduct that needs to be enforced and make decisions in lieu of

Read More
156 Words | 1 Pages

and we have created it to blame the things of our interest over it. The soul is mistaken for all our wills and activities and we think our self controlled by this soul and seem helpless (Coomaraswamy, 2011). This is the thing that separates us from inner peace and we can get the inner

Read More
759 Words | 4 Pages

“I survived Middle School!” A young teen might say, “I am finally done, I am a survivor.” But what this teen does not know is that it’s just the beginning. As kids mature, they will experience many traits to help them survive in different situations. Hyeonseo Lee used skills to escape from North Korea, Aaron Ralston was stuck in the Grand Canyon for 127 hours, and Becca and Tyler From “the Visit” spent a whole week with their grandparents.

Read More
987 Words | 4 Pages

Premise nine states that of the distinct elements of the soul, the desire of a man is due to the appetitive part and logic stems from the rational part of the soul. Using the analogy of thirst as a desire, “if therefore there is something in it that resist thirst it must be something in it other than impulse which is dragging it like a wild animal” (439b). Socrates shows that humans are innately torn by separate elements of the soul that each seek to drive a man in separate directions. Basing of premise nine, Socrates arrives at inference two, which states that the human soul is made from at least two distinct elements, based on the human urges for satisfaction while the subtle restraint within.

Read More
2141 Words | 9 Pages

This seems to be a “totalitarian style” of forcing people to blindly follow what the superior said, no matter they agree or not, or else they will be punished. This indicates that the superior do not tolerate other opinion and deprive the freedom of people to their own belief and thoughts, making the superior an absolute

Read More

More about Appointment By Lee Ho-Chul

Related Topics

Open Document