To Build a Fire

      But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

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Jack London's To Build a Fire, 1st paragraph on page 2

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      Shivers and chills went down my arms as I read the detailed description of the cold, and yet, Jack London's character was not bothered by it at all. Fifty degrees below zero! How could he not be cold? After I learned that, my immediate response to that was that he must be use to the cold, but right away, London explained that that was not so. I love it when the author thinks along the same page as me, and in this case, the same line. My second guess of why the cold does not bother him is probably because he is bundled up in so much clothing that he is warm. I personally hate being cold because I don't like being smashed in cloth of any sort, or having anything heavy on my shoulders. (That may explain why I don't like my shoulders being massaged)
     From the description of the man, I think he must be depressed. He has no imagination, and where there is no imagination, what is the point of all that life? Imagination is something that ever human should have. It is a gift that humans have that animals don't. We can picture what the future may hold for us. Jack's character seems very flat and simple. What he sees in front of his face is exactly what he sees in front of his face, nothing more, nothing less. He doesn't care to have more or less. How can he not care? That's so boring! Poor Pack London was probably feeling very board and a lot like this man while he was up in the cold mountains.

~Alayna~

Dogs have Emotions

Do Dogs Experience the Same Emotions as People?

Dogs have the same brain structures that produce emotions in humans. They have the same hormones and undergo the same chemical changes that humans do during emotional states. Dogs even have the hormone oxytocin, which in humans is involved with love and affection. So it seems reasonable to suggest that dogs also have emotions similar to ours. However, it is important not to go overboard: The mind of a dog us roughly equivalent to that of a human who is 2 to 2 1/2 years old. A child that age clearly has emotions, but not all possible emotions, since many emerge later in the path to adulthood.

Dogs go through their developmental stages much more quickly than humans do, attaining their full emotional range by the time they are 4 to 6 months old. Much like a human toddler, a dog has the basic emotions: joy, fear, anger, disgust, excitement, contentment, distress, and even love. A dog does not have, and will not develop, more complex emotions, like guilt, pride, contempt, and shame, however.

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Discover Magazine, July-August 2012 issue, 4th paragraph of Stanley Coren's "Do Dogs Dream?"

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     I believe that dogs are perfectly capable of dreaming. I have seen dogs whine or cry in their sleep as though they were having a nightmare. I absolutely agree that they have similar emotions as humans. It is apparent to everyone that a dog can be joyful (bouncing around, wagging their tail), angry (growling and barking), afraid (whining and whimpering with ears back, hiding under a table), and loving (snuggling with their owner or a fellow pet). Coren's ideas on how animals think as far as being that of a 2-3 year old child makes so much sense to me.
     I once read in a book put together by several veterinarians that if a dog urinates on the floor and one yells at him, the dog may hide and look guilty, but it is not because he knows what he did wrong. He sees that the owner is angry and he is in the wrong, but he does not always know why.  In the 6th sentence in the passage, Coren's use of the word roughly to describe the dogs made me smile and I could hear the sound of a dog barking. "Rough!" Dogs have emotions very similar to humans, but they do not have all of the complex emotions that people do.

~Alayna~

Compare and Contrast

     There are many differences and similarities in the painting by Grant Wood in 1930 and the picture taken by Ben Shahn in 1935. The obvious facts would be that in both there is a man and a woman standing in front of a house. The differences being that the woman in on the left in the first and on the right in the second. The man in holding no pitchfork in the second picture. In the first picture, the couple had not yet gone through the Great Depression. They have nice, formal looking clothes, the man has glasses, and in the background is there home which is a very nice white, manufactured, two story house. The windows are more expensive looking than in the second picture.
     In the second photo taken during the Great Depression, the man and the woman stand right next to their log cabin. It looks sturdy, but is no where near as nice or fancy as the other one.  It cannot be determined whether it is one story or more. The clothes of the man and his wife as worn-out. The man holds no tools and has no glass because he cannot afford them. He is not clean shaven like the other man, for he has no reason to be. The woman especially, but the man too in the second photo stand more slouched and tired than tall and proud. Their faces have no pride like those in the first, but rather are just hopeless and barely hanging on. They are just surviving. And who could ask them for more than that.

~Alayna~