Peers,
I cannot still resist thinking my idea, Garro is also a hero for Melik, because he can be qualified as a hero with the definition which I found below.
According to Macmillan English Dictionary, one of definitions of hero is "someone who you admire for their intelligence, abilities, or personal qualities."
We can read that Garro is satisfied with his life because he has seven children and enough valuable assets. (Line 33-34) Considering this point, we could say he is one of admirable people for Melik who has an ability to succeed in his life. That is why Melik seriously listened to Garro's advice (he said "Yes, sir" every time after Garro gave advice) even though Melik found later that those advice were wrong.
In addition, I think Garro was very worried about his nephew's traveling alone because he is still young. (we can assume Melik might be a teenager from the line 11; "You are no longer a child") For this reason, Garro tried to make Melik be more careful with telling every possible dangerous situation he could imagine during a travel. That is another reason why his advice sounds very exaggerated.
Consequently, although Garro seems not to be a typical "hero" we usually imagine instantly, his characteristics in the story qualify for being a hero, especially for Melik. Yesterday, I got an idea from my peers that everyone can be a hero. I think Garro is one of "everyone".
I think that Maiko makes a strong argument for her idea that we were wrong on Friday morning to agree that Garro is not a hero. She uses the right sorts of support, and she uses them effectively.
ReplyDeleteSo, do you agree with her? Is Garro a hero or not?
I can agree with you because,as you said "someone who you admire", I think that any character in a story can be a hero "of you". I mean that who is a hero in the story is depends on your opinion. Therefore, someone can consider Melik as the hero, the other one can do Garo as the one in the story.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, considering the film, "Back to the furure", my hero in the story is Doc Brown,who is an eccentric scientific inventor, even though other people consider Marty, who is the main charactor, as the hero.
who is a hero it's up to our own views. that person maybe a hero for you but he may be just a ordinary person for me. In this case, I may agree with you that Garro could be a hero for Melik but only before his trip, i don't think after the trip Melik still considers Garro as his hero, but it's doesn't mean he doesn't not respect his uncle anymore.
ReplyDeleteI still insist my answer that Melik is a hero in the story. From the stoty, I don't think that Garro is Melik's hero because Gorro only told Melik about the dangers of trip without explain the reasons, and Melik also has a question but he doesn't listen to him. Gorro tried to show off. Finally, when Melik found that the real situation is not the same as Gorro's predictions, he knew that it's useless. So, he acted by himself which all opposite from Gorro's suggestion.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, I think that Melik is a hero of this story because he enjoyed his ways, and he knew everybody on the train and everyone also knew him(line 59). It shows that he is friendly, popular and become a hero.
Garro gave a lot of specific advice to Melik in order to be a hero in his nephew's view. As we can see in the last sentence of the story, Garro said that "I am please that someone is profited by my experience"(line68). It shows that Garro, himself, believes that he is a hero. Nevertheless,he is not a hero in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Maiko that Melik used to admire Garro as he is a successful person before Melik experienced the trip. However, Garro's advice was not accepted by Melik especially when he decided to stop doing the things that Garro suggested (Line 55). Since hero is defined as a person who you admire because of a particular quality or skill that they have, Garro doesn't have the heroic qualification because his advice doesn't show great determination to succeed in Melik's trip.
The comments so far all raise important issues, not only for the particular question we are discussing, but for academic discussions more generally.
ReplyDeleteI thought that there were two ways we might argue against Maiko's idea. Pin and Ing have clearly opted for one of those approaches, the one I would be inclined to adopt myself.
Taka and An seem to me to have deliberately chosen not to pursue the other way that some might support a disagreement with Maiko, so it isn't entirely clear whether or not they actually agree or disagree with Maiko. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that Taka does now agree with Maiko that Garro is a hero, but I'm really not sure if An thinks that he is a hero or not.
I'm looking forward to your further contributions to the discussion, including comments on the comments, which is largely what I've done in this one.
(I've reposted this because there was a mistake in the first version that was serious: a missing word made it difficult to understand my meaning. I should have reviewed a little more carefully before clicking the "Post Comment" button.)
I'm wondering what if Garro didn't give those advices to Melik. Melik would never offer another man a cigarette. He would never join a dinner with a lady. He would never play a poker. He would never do that kind of things. He followed the advices exactly in the first place, and eventually figured out that there was no pointed of doing those things. The point is that Melik was learnt something from Garro’s advices whether his advices were falsely giving because he is a fool or he intended to give them that way to let Melik faces the situations himself and learns something from them. I think Garro was a Hero for Melik.
ReplyDeleteQ@: Why don't you think that if Garro didn't give these advises to Melik, he could do it in the first day of his trip not the second day.
ReplyDeleteFor me, Garro is not a hero absolutely in my view. I guess he's not a hero for Melik too, because a person who has 7 chilren, and a lot of property, it doesn't mean that he's a hero. What i see that is Melik repect his uncle and a bit afraid of him because as we said in class that Garro is the kind of conservative man.
Maiko's idea is really interesting. I suppose that now our topic changes from "who is the hero" to "is Garro a hero for Melik". Maiko provideed very a convincing set of evidences to support her statement that Melik admired Garro. However, in my opinion, some points can be interpreted into different direction.
ReplyDeleteFirst, from line 2, I incline to infer that it was not Melik who asked suggestion from Garro, but Garro came to visit Melik to give some advices before Melik travelled to New York.
When Melik replied his uncle by using the phrases "Yes, sir.", it was not necessary that he admired him. It could have been that he just only respected Garro as his senior relative.
When Melik got into the train, he did what Garro had told him; however, I think that this behavior also does not need to reflect his admiration toward his uncle. For example, in my own experience, when I travelled to somewhere I have never been before I usually asked some suggestion from my friends who already went there before. I appreciated their help and usually did what they told me to do, but I did not take them as my hero.
For the reasons mentioned above, I incline to think that Melik has never expressed his admiration toward his uncle. These reasons discourage me from thinking that Garro is Melik's hero as well.
Before I decide if Garro is the hero, I cannot stop having negative thoughts on him. When I read his speeches, I felt he had negative thoughts and was regretful person. 1:His advices are as if saying don't trust any one. 2: All his advices seem to be based on his bitter experiences which he remember crealy to the detail, which are actualy not practical for Melic. 3:Despite he did start advising, suddenly he tried to stop talking avoiding clear answer to nephew's question (line 26-30). Moreover, when he started telling his success story, also he said,"Let's not speak of the matter again. It's finished. ... Let's not give it another thought. ..." What did he infer in these pieces of speech. He should't say these if he was fully satisfied with his life.
ReplyDeleteBecause of these, I cannot find any positive thoughts on Garro...
An:: Because I don't think that Melik could do such things particularly without advices from his uncle. and my point is, Garro is a hero for Melik because Melik had learnt somethings from him regardless of what kind of person Garro was. By the way, i'm not trying to convince you guys or anything, it's just my own opinion. I think this is an open question. I don't think we have to find the right answer for this, Do we?
ReplyDeleteI like the way that Liu has clearly stated an important distinction that we need to keep in mind; namely, that there are two different questions we should not confuse. The two questions are:
ReplyDelete1. Is Garro a hero for Melik? That is, does Melik see Garro as a hero? (or does "a hero for" have some other meaning?)
and
2. Is Garro really a hero?
I think that it would be possible to answer "Yes" to question 1, and "No" to question 2. It might help to consider another example. If we look at North Korea, it is possible, I think very likely, that were we to ask a resident of that country, "Is Kim Jong Il a national hero and benevolent leader?" that they would honestly say "Yes". But they would be wrong. Kim Jong Il, the "Dear Leader" of desperately poor North Korea is a monster who abuses his people to keep himself and family in power and luxury. Similarly, even if Melik thought of Garro as a hero, he might be wrong.
I think that what Melik thinks is relevant to our question, but now that Liu has made the distinction clear, we can take care to focus on the question that Quest asked: is Garro a hero?
Of course, if we decide that Melik does mistakenly think that Garro is a hero, it would be useful, and important, to explain what caused his misunderstanding, just as we need to explain why millions of North Koreans are so completely wrong about their "Dear Leader". In the case of North Korea, the explanation is a combination of glossy and pervasive propaganda, and draconian laws that strictly prohibit any criticism.
I also agree with Liu that it is important to correctly understand the significance of the Melik's repeated "Yes sir" in response to Garro's advice. And Liu's answer to that seems right to me, as do Chie's analyses of what is going on in the story.
ReplyDeleteAfter I've already read all of the comment above, I agree with Liu that we should clear about the topic that we are discussing about.
ReplyDeleteFor the topic that "Is Garro a hero for Melik?"
I think that Garro is a hero for Melik Because from the definition of hero that Maiko give in her argument, Garro can be hero of Melik.It depend on point of view of Melik and I think that Melik admire his uncle. On the other hand, if I look for another topic that "Is Garro really a hero?" I think Garro is not a really hero becuuse for me I can not see his intelligence from his advice but I can see Melik's intelligence and bravery.
I thought that Q said something a bit strange in his comment above where he writes: "By the way, i'm not trying to convince you guys or anything, it's just my own opinion" (November 14, 11:19 PM).
ReplyDeleteWhy does this seem strange to me? Because if we don't also believe that our opinion is right, why bother to say it at all? We say things, especially in an academic situation, because we really do think we're right, or at least that they might be right, and we want to convince others of that or at least put the idea up for further investigation. So, as you might have guessed, I also found the comment: "it's up to our own views" (An, November 14, 5:24 PM) to be equally strange. I don't think that statements normally become true or false simply because someone believes them or not. (The truth of some statements does vary according to the beliefs of the people stating them, and interesting as that set of statements might be for logicians and philosophers, they are not the sort of statement that we are most often concerned with.)
This is similar to the reason why we would not normally introduce our thesis statement with the words in my opinion, I think, or the other such phrases. However you follow those phrases, the resulting sentence must be true unless you are lying, and that makes it so weak that there is no need for any further support. If I honestly believe that Liu has 1,234, 567 Baht in a Bangkok Bank account today, and I say , "In my opinion, Liu has 1, 234, 557 Baht in a Bangkok Bank account," then my sentence is certainly true and needs no further support. It's hard to imagine what else could support a sentence that is talking only about a belief in my head. If your thesis statement begins with the words I believe that, then there no need to write an essay to support it, whatever it says.
As we have seen the past few days in our discussions, there is often disagreement about a question, and it can be difficult to decide what it the best definition or way of understanding something, but that a topic is complex or confusing does not mean that all ideas and opinions about it are equally good: it does mean we might have to work hard to sort out the useful ideas from the not so useful, the better from the not so good.