Extended Reflection Journal (BLOG)

Extended Reflection Journal (500 Words min.) - Due Tuesday May 31, at 8 AM

In describing the collapse of the roof of Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, Larson writes "In a great blur of snow and silvery glass the building's roof—that marvel of late nineteenth-century hubris, enclosing the greatest volume of unobstructed space in history—collapsed to the floor below" [p. 196–97]. Was the entire Fair, in its extravagant size and cost, an exhibition of arrogance? Do such creative acts automatically engender a darker, destructive parallel?

Money, fame, style; extravagance defines America. We watch, absorbed, as celebrities flaunt fortune, cars, boutique fashions and more. Size of things gets bigger and smaller and transfixes the consumers of our generation along with cost. As it rises more people purchase gaining status for material possessions. Throughout American history, our forefathers have created and displayed America as one of a kind amazement. Thus the world fair was born; a tool to launch our civilized country into a prosperous nation conceived on jealousy and materialism.

The World's fair introduces a new found obsession with becoming a world superpower in America in the 19^th century. Arrogance is an overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors; directly relating to the fair. The fair is only installed and designed in order to project America as a wondrous country better than that of the Paris exposition. Its supposed to be designed bigger and better than anything in existence no matter of cost or physical, earthly, limitations. The fair was one hundred percent a display of American arrogance during the 19^th century. It is used throughout its running as an act to draw in and hypnotize tourists to believe and register America as a world power; the best, and only, of its kind. In order to reach this level of greatness no cost limit was implicated, displaying the arrogance and pride America soaked in and developed during the worlds fair construction and exposition. America wanted to reach the title of number one, outdoing the competition Paris displayed. This simple act of want, greed, and need for material popularity gained America arrogance not easily forgotten. Arrogance must be displayed in order to gain the superiority America strove for when wanting to build and construct a beautiful, amazing world exposition sure to draw in, capture, and shock tourists and business men from all over ready and willing to watch America sky rocket to stardom.

I believe that when projects are thought out and created with arrogance they can definitely engender the darkness to come. With such an amazing feat of producing and constructing such an impressive monument of a fair, there will always come downfall, danger, and an engendering of darkness that will always accompany feats of amazement, including the world fair. Larson's entire novel is written in the perspective of each of the two main characters lives embodying the question of whether or not the fair contradicts with darkness. This directly contrasts the White city and the black city, the advancement of the fairs technology and architectural design and Holmes's murderous killing spree of darkness and danger. In life, all good parallels with bad and life cannot always be fair. With out this distinct parallel that exists Larson's novel could not have been produced, or written as a factual account of America. You must accept the good, and deal with the bad witch is directly established in the pages one hundred ninety six to seven. By pointing out the destruction of the fair by arrogance and to distinguish dark that always parallels good Larson's novel parallels these features perfectly.