Given author Samuel R. Delany’s deliberate, complex writing style, one can safely assume that he leaves very little to chance. Due to this, I found the main character quite striking in Delany’s text Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Delany names his main character “Marq Dyeth,” which the reader eventually learns to be […]
Delany’s novel, Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand, does an excellent job of covering a huge array of topics. This makes it overwhelmingly hard though to figure out which to discus. So I decided to look closer at civilization. There are two main paths of civilization in this novel. They are basically at odds with […]
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71ZbF1lmZ%2BL._SL1500_.jpg As I was reading Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand by Samuel Delaney it was hard for me to connect with any aspect of the novel. The setting, characters and concepts in the novel were really foreign to me. One of the aspects of the novel that I could connect with […]
In Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand, desire is the fuel of every day movement. What one desires to do, be, eat, taste, hunt, or have sexual relations with defines how a person (or evelem) acts on a daily basis. Particularly while following Marq Dyeth’s story one can see how […]
Who are you? We ask ourselves this from the moment we are conscious of ourselves. We see ourselves not only through our own eyes, but also through the eyes of others. The names they call us, the comments they make, even the way they act around you, helps to define yourself to you. This is […]
After finishing Delany’s novel, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, one of the things that struck me the most was the lack of privacy Rat was receiving while with Marq Dyeth on the planet Velm because even though Rat is looked upon as this extraordinary character in Marq’s society, he doesn’t receive any privacy […]
On Velm, the inhabitants only using “he” as a pronoun denoting sexual desire at all really jarred me and was an effective contrast to our society’s view of women. Throughout the novel, clearly, “she” is the standard pronoun in most situations. This was jarring to me, as a male, it made me feel somewhat marginalized. […]
This book has been very difficult to read at the pace we have been given. With Delany using words differently from what we know and understand their meaning to be, cause me to pause and think about how the English language had been created. Our English is different from Old English and is even different […]
No matter our culture, location, or even species, humans and animals alike seem to prefer a fair deal of familiarity in our lives. People wish to spend time with those they know and enjoy, dogs have their favorite toy, and cats have their favorite sleeping spot in the sun. If you take someone out of […]
Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand is a novel which needs considerable amount of time to really understand. It is filled with so much information we don’t understand that it’s overwhelming and hard to read. The universe in the novel is filled with different kinds of sentient beings, rules and languages that takes […]
The sheer diversity and complexity that Delaney is able to present us with is quite astonishing on many different levels. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt so overwhelmed by information and detail (perhaps when I first began to read?). It’s almost like trying to decipher a set of pictograms or ideograms. The depth […]
Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, is a novel that pushes our ways of thought, and stretches our understanding of language. Although the book is extremely dense, and I’m struggling to trudge my way through what feels like wall after wall of text, I also can’t help but find myself […]
Samuel R. Delany’s novel Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand is providing to be quite a challenge for me. One of the things that has stood out to me in the novel is gender and the use of words that go along with gender. This topic has definitely been covered in class but […]
Semiotics is the study of “signs” and how we (humans) construct meaning with them. Stars In my Pocket Like Grains of Sand offers literary semiotics by showing how we use a word or constructed sign (the pronoun “she”) to signify a more general and and mind-independent object in the world (a woman) (71). However, having studied some […]
Samuel Delaney’s novel Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is not impressing me so far plot-wise, but some of the issues presented in the novel, especially the use of slavery with the “rats” is definitely capturing my attention. Judging from what has happened in the novel and the history the reader has seen […]
As mentioned in class I would agree that this book has been difficult to understand mostly due to the complex language Delany uses. I thought that the ending of chapter six was interesting. When Marq is informed that Rat is his perfect match by the WEB. The way that their compatibility was described to the […]
After the last couple of discussions in class, I have to say, the language in Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is extremely unique because not only the language challenges readers, the language provides interesting words to describe the setting and characters. For instance, in the prologue, we are introduced […]
Knowledge: another process, finally no different, in its overall form, from the one called stupidity. Information is not taken into the human organism so much as it is created from the strong association of external and internal perceptions. These associations are called knowledge, insight, belief, understanding, belligerence, pig-headedness, stupidity. (Only social use determines which associations […]
As a reader and a fan of horror films, not much disturbs me anymore. That is until I read the opening pages of the novel “Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand” by Samuel Delaney. My aunt has been a respected mental health nurse for over 23 years now and that has made me […]
“The truth is, Santine, I don’t have any real concept of how a billion differs from a million. Or a thousand. At least in real terms. No human does.” (101) This quote and the following short discussion really struck me because it reminded me of the way we learn. In elementary school we are told […]