Question

Following MLA guidelines, documenet each of the following quotations as you wouldi f you were citing it within the text of an essay.

1. The quotation below appears on page 26 of the essay In Plato's Cave by Susan Sontag.
"Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are."

2. The quotation below apperas on page 12 of the essay Politics and the English Language by George Orwell.
"In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them."

Answer 1

1. In Susan Sontag’s view, both Plato’s cave images and photographs represent “mere images of the truth”.Through the essay “In Plato’s Cave”, Sontag uses the term “truth” interchangeable with the term “reality” but she disregards defining either of them.The difference between what we can see with ‘our own eye’ (reality) and what we can see ‘with the camera’ (photograph) is reduced to the physical/mechanical differences between the human eye and the body camera/lens.Sontag’s comparison between Plato’s cave images and photographed ones acknowledges their distinctive natures and, also, the dissemblance between their specific educational abilities – “being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images” – in its attempt to explore the reasons behind their influences upon viewers.  Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are. Those occasions when the taking of photographs is relatively undiscriminating, promiscuous, or self-effacing do not lessen the didacticism of the whole enterprise.
2. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations.