Exterior Impact
English 1CH
3 April 2013
Exterior Impact Throughout the course of a person’s lifetime, many factors can affect how that person experiences his or her daily life. Some of these factors are internal such as emotional factors. However, a person is most affected by external factors. One such external factor is a person’s own environment. A person who is put in a cruel and harsh environment can react or develop very differently from a person who grows up in a much grand environment. In 2006, a professor from LeHigh University named Mark H. Bickhard wrote in a paper called How Does Environment Affect the Person?: “An open system in interaction with its environment will proceed in that interaction in accordance with that environment and with the internal organization of the system” (Bickhard 6). Bickhard is saying that a person’s response to an environment has to do with how he or she interacts within it. This effect could alter a person’s perception and how they think. In David Foster Wallace’s speech to the graduating class of 2005 at Kenyon College called “This is Water”, Wallace expresses how a person’s choices and the world around them can affect their perception and how they think. A majority of what Wallace expresses in his speech is revealed in the movie called Barton Fink. In Barton Fink, directed by the Coen Brothers, Barton, who is a well-known author in New York, goes to Hollywood to make a better living for himself. Through the process, he is affected significantly by his environment. Barton Fink’s mysterious and ever-changing environment becomes the source and motivation for his writings but also hinders him in his conquest to discover the life of the “common man” because it blinds him from seeing what is right in front of him and causes him to be trapped in his own mind. Barton Fink’s paper thin walls manipulate his perception of Charlie “Madman” Mundt because it gives him the wrong sense about Charlie and also bothers him in his writings. When
3 April 2013
Exterior Impact Throughout the course of a person’s lifetime, many factors can affect how that person experiences his or her daily life. Some of these factors are internal such as emotional factors. However, a person is most affected by external factors. One such external factor is a person’s own environment. A person who is put in a cruel and harsh environment can react or develop very differently from a person who grows up in a much grand environment. In 2006, a professor from LeHigh University named Mark H. Bickhard wrote in a paper called How Does Environment Affect the Person?: “An open system in interaction with its environment will proceed in that interaction in accordance with that environment and with the internal organization of the system” (Bickhard 6). Bickhard is saying that a person’s response to an environment has to do with how he or she interacts within it. This effect could alter a person’s perception and how they think. In David Foster Wallace’s speech to the graduating class of 2005 at Kenyon College called “This is Water”, Wallace expresses how a person’s choices and the world around them can affect their perception and how they think. A majority of what Wallace expresses in his speech is revealed in the movie called Barton Fink. In Barton Fink, directed by the Coen Brothers, Barton, who is a well-known author in New York, goes to Hollywood to make a better living for himself. Through the process, he is affected significantly by his environment. Barton Fink’s mysterious and ever-changing environment becomes the source and motivation for his writings but also hinders him in his conquest to discover the life of the “common man” because it blinds him from seeing what is right in front of him and causes him to be trapped in his own mind. Barton Fink’s paper thin walls manipulate his perception of Charlie “Madman” Mundt because it gives him the wrong sense about Charlie and also bothers him in his writings. When
Cited: Barton Fink. Dir. Coen Brothers. By Coen Brothers and Coen Brothers 1991. DVD. Bickhard, Mark H. "How Does the Environment Affect the Person?" LeHigh University, 7 Mar. 2006. Web. 7 Apr. 2013. Spiro, John-Paul. Post Script- Essays in Films and the Humanities; Winter-Spring 2008;27,2; International Index to Performing Arts Full Text pg.62. 7 Apr. 2013 Wallace, David Foster. “In Memoriam” 19 Sep. 2008. Web. 7 Apr. 2013