Kamoya
and Uncle Tungsten: two fantastically weird men. One has an affinity for ancient bone
fragments and the other lusts over metal. In any other situation these infatuations are neurotic—a
prescription for the crazy-house. Yet, the
genre of science allows for these peculiar people to exist, and even thrive, unstigmatized
(I love the “add word” function of spellcheck). The field of science allows the unusual to
find their niche, to turn their quirky obsessions into a discipline of discovery. At the
end of both profiles, we find ourselves attracted to these scientists. We appreciate the fanaticism, the odd
perspectives, the passionate perseverance, and a fervent devotion to, well, really
old bones. The epitome of the science
profile, it seems, is showing "strange" as beautiful. Sacks and Leakey/Lewin did a fantastic job of
this. I see a few especially effective techniques:
1.
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| Anthropomorphization at its finest. |
Lastly, remembering a profile is namely about the subject. The image of Uncle Tungsten’s blackened hands, and his office full of odds and ends of mismatched pieces of metal did wonders for allowing me to know the man. Although the scientists made incredible discoveries, these were presented in light of their personalities. We came to know the research, which could potentially be bland, through their fascinating characters. They were placed in their respective environments; I saw Kamoya sitting alone on the rocky gully with his sieve and field notebook, filtering handful after handful of sand and stones. In doing so, his bone discoveries weren’t simply bones—they represented the fruit of devotion, sweat, and painted a beautiful allegory of piecing together humanity.
Am I the only one who now wants a piece of tungsten metal?
Anjeli,
ReplyDeleteAfter reflecting on these stories a bit more, and reading your post, I'm not dreading this next paper as much. We are painting portraits with words, and shining a light through our subjects to project their work. Something as simple as describing someone's work space can do a lot more than I originally thought, it's so easy to forget that good writing is made up of all the little observations we all make but never vocalize. It creates that feeling of familiarity in the reader, and makes them a part of the story. I'm excited to get to use anthropomorphises in this project, because we've seen it derail other articles (The Love That Dare Not Squawk Its Name) when it comes to giving credibility to the research. It's often beside the point to assign human variables to animals or reactions in the universe, but when it comes to displaying a person, it fits in perfectly.
Also, i've been a metal head since single digits...Sacks' article makes me want to take that to the next level. I too would like some tungsten. And a vat full of mercury. And magnets so powerful that permits are required to own them. Because rock is cool, but metal is superior.
Anjeli, I like what you’ve done in this post to pick apart the devices used by each author. I paused when I hit Sacks’s description of wolfram but didn’t think about it as carefully as you did. I think the short narrative here is important for really grasping how the author felt: “like a hungry animal, it ‘stole’ the tin” (218). The more I look at that section the more I realize that the metal is first given life and then personified. In other words, it’s a two-stage process of anthropomorphizing. The progression from inanimate object to wolf, and from wolf to something capable of moral choices (and stealing – everything that needs to eat eats when it’s hungry, but in this case it’s stealing for some reason) happens really quickly. I think this is what contributes to the impression of the metal as “mystical” (218) – that jump from metal to human is more complex than the one from either metal to animal or animal to human. I think this is indicative of how people sometimes see themselves within their environments.
ReplyDeleteI also really like that you pointed out how readers are drawn to align themselves with Kamoya’s doubting colleagues even though we know better. We know from early on that this will be a story about a huge discovery. Instead of “suspension of disbelief,” we’re drawn into a sort of “suspension of belief” as part of that “engaging cohesive device” you describe. Thanks for a really interesting and thought provoking post.
Liam