Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide

The blog I have been following the past few days, 'Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide', is a daily blog about today's newest gadgets and updates in technology. They cover everything from viruses to be aware of and to new gadget reviews. It informs readers of all the crazy, helpful and popular technology updates from around the world.

I found this blog to be very informative and surprisingly interesting, reading it every day or so surely will become a habit. It is updated all the time by members of the blog who submit informative posts. I at first thought I would have no interest reading about technology, but I found a lot of the posts helpful, entertaining, or just good things to know for future gadget purchases and computer help. Gizmodo is connected to our course through it's technology aspect, as our course is online and we are currently researching new technologies used to broaden classroom experiences, this blog informs readers of new technologies to enrich our lives. Schools are closely connected to technology providing online access to lectures, class blogs for students to network in and recieve peer feedback and assitance as well as a new emerging technology in school systems, podcasting.

I would definitely reccommend this blog to anyone who wants to keep connected and up to date with our fast paced society. Keeping up with inventions, handy gadgets and universal progression in technology is, in my opinion, important information. Our world is moving so quickly sometimes that it can be hard to keep up with what's new, what's in, what's not worth your money, and what's actually worth investing in. Gizmodo helps us by offering reviews and daily updates regarding today's complex offerings of technology and gadgets.

My Father's House

In Sylvia Fraser's memoir, she is described to be both the detective and the murder victim by Margaret Atwood. This description of Fraser's memoir is spot on, as she does have to uncover her past to discover the trauma she had hidden from herself as a child. A miraculous way of self protection for such a young girl, she soon finds she had created another personality which filed away her memories of sexual abuse, a personality who also took over whenever she was raped by her father. The Child Who Knows is Fraser's other self that she had created, and later named as an adult, digging up her memories from the past. This Child Who Knows is indeed Fraser's murder victim, the one who hold's the secrets and memories of her sexual abuse from the age of three all the way to her years in university. This 'murder victim' would take over and protect Fraser from these experiences to the point where she had no idea of her sexual abuse. As a grown woman, triggered by a friend's experience, she finds that her hatred towards her father may be because she was raped. After this sudden anger and surprise thoughts about being raped, Fraser is determined to find answers to these accusations she comes up with. Putting herself in the detective role, she must go to a hypnotherapist to uncover the answers she is searching for. Searching for the answers to her own childhood experiences creates a unique mystery for the reader to become involved in. A very unique mystery, and also exciting as we wait for Fraser to find closure and answers to her own life searching within her life.

Atwood and Fraser comparison

Margaret Atwood writes “My father’s house has the tension and pace of a detective novel except that the detective is part of the narrator’s self and so is the murder victim.” After reading the memoir “My Fathers House” by Sylvia Fraser, the connection between the two became quite clear. Throughout “My Fathers House,” Sylvia splits herself into two individuals. Her adult self plays the detective, and her childhood self, who plays the victim. The foggy memory of being the victim of rape and incest starts to resurface while her adult self tries to unsolve this mystery. Sylivia feels she owes it to her childhood self to unravel this memory and confront it, in hopes of finding the strength in her to forgive and feel a sense of closure. To dig up a suppressed memory so deep must be extremely overwhelming and powerful and I truly could not imagine going through such an extreme event, especially when you realize your father played the criminal.

Margaret Atwood's Quote

Margaret Atwood's quote "My Father's House has the tension and pace of a detective novel - except that the detective is a part of the narrator's self, and so is the murder victim." is pretty self explanatory if one has read "My Father's House" (or knows what it's about). Atwood's quote is indeed very befitting because Sylvia Fraser had somehow done the miraculous act of splitting herself into two people unaware of the other's existence - a victim and a detective of sorts. Both live in one body but seem to be of different minds. Her comparison of the life story to that of a detective novel seems appropriate. When I read the excerpt, I found myself wondering how Fraser would analyze and collect the clues she had embedded in herself to reach the truth she had unknowingly buried so long ago. Fraser had to search through vestiges of a second life led unconsciously.To discover an occurrence so terrible and catalytic hidden within one's own mind seems very profound to me. It must have been that much more unbelievable to the detective that discovered she was indeed the victim.

- Lucie M

Atwood's commentary on Fraser's Memoir

Atwood's comment about Fraser's memoir is a perfect description. It describes what Fraser herself must have felt while discovering this unknown, suppressed part of her own self. It is frightening to think that an individual could live through a traumatic event and be so damaged they actually completely remove it from their memory unknowingly. It raises questions about how the physical body is connected to the mind so intricately and with such complexity that our conscious selves cannot always understand or be aware of the connections. In this case, Fraser was divided as two selves, one that experienced the torture and one that is shielded from the abuse. Her physical and mental self was so damaged she refused to let herself even be aware of what occurred nevertheless remember it. In coming to realization, she also becomes aware of this other self, as Atwood describes the detective and the murder victim. It is puzzling and terrifying to think that the two can be one and the same. Inevitably, Fraser’s trauma was life altering and destructive to a degree that her own mind could not accept. In discovering this murder mystery she had to discover that she herself was the victim.

My Fathers House

Throughout Margaret's life she has created this other half of a person to hide and burry the thoughts, memories, and guilt brought on after the sexual abuse she encountered from her father. After many years later she has then excavated her thoughts and feelings as her own detective to the mystery of her hidden secrets- the murdered victim. As the detective discovers further into the past, the revealed pieces merge together both this hidden other and Margaret herself to one day receive closure from her traumatized and impactful childhood.

My Father's House

My Father's house does have a feel of a detective's novel, just like Margret Atwood said. Sylvia is trying to figure out why she feels the way she does. It is as if she had locked up all the real memories and made them into dreams that seemed to resemble fantasies. Her dreams, where like her actually descriptive thoughts of what she felt towards her father and the events of abuse. It is as if she is detecting the crime that had happened to her, she was the victim, but as the detective. No one else would be able to figure it out but her, she was there and experienced the abuse, Sylvia also needed to figure it out for her own sanity. Since she had locked up her memories of the past she had to think hard about her encounters with her father and try and remember things like exact details, and her feelings. It was almost like she had ton investigate her own mind, and re-enact the past, so she could truly solve the crime.