| Nacirema or America? |
The author criticized Nacirema people's behavior,
especially the Nacirema culture in his essay because he applied ceremonies and
rituals which belong to ancient tribes.
For instance, there is an expression, "extremes to
which human behavior can go." In other words, this sentence means human
behavior is going to limit. It applies the article will criticize human
behavior in Nacirem. Also, this article satirizes three important things which
related to people's life. One is shrine, another is latipso and the other is
holy-mouth-men.
Shrine means bathroom which is one of the important
places of human. I use it too and the author criticizes this stuff because
people in Nacirema distinguish their property by how much bathrooms are in
their houses. After I read about shrine, there were some stories about latipso.
I read about latipso, I did not understand anything because there were no
results when I read about latipso. So, I passed that, however, I was sure about
that latipso was one of the important things in human life since the most
things criticized in this essay were about the essential things for human. I
could infer that the ‘Holy-mouth-men’ means dentists.. There is a sentence,
"The Nacirema has an almost pathological horror of and fascination with
the mouth, the condition which is believed to have a supernatural influence on
all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they would believe
that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their
friends desert them, and their lovers reject them." This can be evidence
that the Holy-mouth-men are the people who care Nacirema people's teeth, so I
could infer them as dentists. Even though Nacirema people were afraid of their
teeth, teeth have been one of the important parts of human.
All students include myself did not know about the exact
meaning of Nacirema and other strange words. Then, teacher Menard said
"Nacimer is the backward of American in its spelling." After I heard
Menard's answer, most of my questions were solved. This essay absolutely
satirizes American, however this was written in 1956. The year of 1956 was about
50 years ago. I can reflect two explanations. One is about that period, when the
people in America lived as the essay expresses. They used market economy
system, and they thought the property was really important. Also there are many
cultures that the essay satirizes about and all of the cultures have been the main
idea which author wanted to criticize. The other explanation is that the author
predicts the future. The society will be more complex, so there may be various
controversial cultures, so he wanted to explain that.
The phrase, " Thinking conversely" is really
right. I could not guess that Nacirema was the back words of American. Many
successful people such as Bill Gates or Steve jobs said "Think creatively
and conversely!" May be Horace Miner thought the same as them. By thinking
conversely, he could criticize the current American or the future American creatively.
I decided to live like them. If I want to live conversely, I should think one
thing in various ways, and this essay has a good motive that made me decide to live
with diverse and creative thinking.
